


Love, Jemma

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Childhood Friends, F/M, Love Rosie, Love Rosie AU, UST, Unrequited Love, best friends since forever, life gets in the way, long distance, oh the angst, so many feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:56:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6681082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We were inseparable, yet constantly being separated." </p><p>Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons had been friends so long that even their parents forgot they’d ever existed separately. When puberty hit, nothing changed. (We believe them, right?) But as college decisions arrive, Fitz and Jemma find their lives moving in different directions. </p><p>Love, Rosie AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Best Birthday Ever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not necessary that you've seen Love, Rosie or read the book to understand, follow along, or enjoy. I highly recommend the movie, though (Sam Claflin, be still my heart), and have heard the book is great as well!!

Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons had been friends so long that even their parents forgot they’d ever existed separately. Technically they met at science camp the summer after kindergarten, but they became friends on the first day of first grade when they both hesitated to rush out to recess with the others. Their eyes met across the emptying classroom and even without the kid-sized lab coats and plastic beakers for context, they remembered each other’s barely suppressed eagerness from the summer. Jemma, with a precociousness she never lost, walked straight up to him and held out her hand as she’d seen the grown-ups do. 

“I’m Jemma.” 

“Leopold,” he said shyly, but she smiled widely as they shook hands and from there it was effortless. 

Within weeks he grew tired of being teased by the other boys for his name - “Do all Scottish people have such silly names?” - and told everyone to call him Fitz instead. (Years later he would insist it had been an admiring imitation of the boys in his neighborhood who went to a private school and all called each other by their last names, and Jemma would never contradict him.) They bonded over being the only two kids in the class who had to wear hand-me-down uniforms, and only Fitz knew that Jemma changed her accent ever so slightly at school to sound like she came from a different class than she did. They sat together, finding a way to flout alphabetical assignments through carefully choreographed barters with Angie Smith or Peter Eccleston. 

By the second month of school, they were both bored out of their minds by a curriculum which did nothing to challenge them. They created assignments for each other, passing little logic problems and messages in code on scraps of paper. Once the teacher caught them, and rather than risk their arrangement, Fitz stuffed the paper into his mouth as the teacher hauled him up by his ear. (Truthfully, Jemma could have thought of some more sanitary ways to dispose of the evidence, but she was grateful nonetheless.) 

Outside of the classroom, too, they were inseparable. Fitz got a new bike for Christmas and once the weather cleared enough he let Jemma sit on the handlebars while he biked around and around and around his tiny neighborhood, which was as far as his mum would let him wander. Jemma’s father drove them twice a month to a point outside the city where the stars were more clear, and they’d stay up well past their usual bedtime, munching on crisps as they memorized the constellations. Their teacher found them both poring over an atlas and the next week, for her birthday, Jemma’s parents gave her a globe, the plastic kid-friendly kind that came with a switch which made the whole globe light up from within. Jemma and Fitz would sit for hours, spinning the globe and closing their eyes and stopping it suddenly. Wherever their fingers landed, that, they said, would be where they’d explore first. Brazil, Ethiopia, Canada, Malaysia -- all of the exciting places waiting just for them. 

It was obvious they were friends, but Jemma first realized they were best friends during the second grade when they would lay on the floor of her room after school, sharing the earbuds to a Walkman and some new pop CD out of the US, and Fitz would tell her about the dreams he had. Not the travel-the-world kind of dreams, but the ‘last night I dreamt I was a 747’ kind of dreams. Fitz didn’t say much in class but when they were together, whether just laying there or puttering around in the make-shift laboratory Jemma’s parents set up for them in the backyard, he couldn’t seem to stop talking. That day, the first day Fitz shared a dream with her, was the day Jemma knew he trusted her completely. She didn’t need to say anything, just lifted a hand between them, palm up, and let him intertwine his fingers with hers. They both looked back up the ceiling, smiling. 

Not much changed until they hit puberty and then, well, nothing really changed some more. Certainly Fitz grew a few inches - only a few, mind; he was still shorter than most of the other boys - and Jemma was suddenly conscious of the ways in which their bodies were changing so they could no longer share clothes. But nothing had to change, not really. They were still inseparable, and for Jemma and Fitz, that was all that mattered. 

Which was why, when Jemma turned 18 - the day our story truly starts - she of course celebrated by going out to the pub with Fitz. Well, that’s what she’d promised, but when she said pub she meant club which was really only a difference of a few letters. And he’d never been able to say no to her, so here they were, music deafening, lights flashing. A few shots each and they were jumping up and down on the dance floor with something only slightly resembling rhythm. 

“Best birthday EVER!” Jemma shouted at Fitz. 

“What?” he yelled. 

“Best - oh, never mind. Shots?” 

At the bar, they each got a shot of tequila. Jemma clambered onto a stool and kneeled so that she was taller than Fitz. She presented him his shot glass with a flourish, then took her own, and they linked arms, as they always did with shots (but only with each other; anyone else would find it strange). 

“To forever friends,” Jemma shouted. 

He grinned at her, then licked the salt from his hand and tossed back the shot. She did the same, and they both gritted their teeth and shook their heads as the bite of the alcohol hit them. 

“Lemons!” Jemma cried, forcing a slice into Fitz’s mouth. He nearly choked on it and then laughed and then she was laughing and trying to eat her lemon at the same time and it really was the best birthday ever. 

The lemon dropped from Fitz’s teeth and he looked down, head hitting Jemma’s chest as he made to stoop for it. She snorted in laughter again and he looked back up, face very close to hers now. He took the lemon gingerly out of her mouth so she wouldn’t hurt herself and she kept laughing, leaning down onto him, hands on his shoulder, forehead pressed to his, nose sliding next to his eye, and the music seemed to fade out around them. Fitz closed his eyes, savoring this moment, not knowing what it was but wanting nothing more than to stay in it forever with Jemma. But then he opened his eyes and saw hers closed, eyelashes spread across her freckled cheeks and her head tilted, her face moving closer to his - 

He moved forward a fraction as well and swallowed, suddenly finding it very hard to think anything at all. Their tequila-heavy breath mingled in the air between them as the moment extended, as they both felt the shift in the air and their lips hovered centimeters apart. Then Jemma’s nose was nudging underneath his and their lips found each other, her tongue already tracing his lower lip. It was aching and slow and all too short, for Jemma soon pulled back to look at him. Fitz’s gaze flickered from her eyes to her lips and back again, wondering what they’d just done, wondering if it had been alright, wondering if she’d let him do it again. 

Indeed, she leaned towards him again - 

And in her alcoholic stupor she moved too quickly and the stool beneath her slid out completely, sending her crashing to the floor. Fitz looked at the space where she’d just been, a lemon wedge still clutched in one hand. 

 

It was the worst hangover Jemma had ever had, and she swore as she woke up to piercing sunlight and her little brothers running up and down the stairs that she would never drink again. (That promise lasted about a week.) She groaned and was about to haul the covers back over her head when there was a knock on the door and her mum yelled, “Jemma, Fitz is here!” 

“It was all my fault, Mrs. Simmons, I can’t tell you how awful I feel,” Fitz was saying worriedly. Jemma’s mum gave him a look - he wasn’t six anymore and she was prepared to be wary of any and all boys spending too much time with her eldest daughter, but this was still Fitz, with his rumpled curls and one side of his collar tucked inside of his jumper. 

“I’d love to believe you, Fitz, but I happen to know Jemma. She’s a force of nature and nothing you or I do will stop her when she wants something,” Mrs. Simmons said, shaking her head as Fitz moved to the stairs. “Have to wonder how they feel about this kind of behavior at MIT, though. Any word on that acceptance letter yet?” 

“Why is everybody shouting?” Jemma mumbled petulantly, appearing at the top of the stairs cocooned in her comforter and squinting down at them. 

Mrs. Simmons gave Fitz a “she’s your problem” look and headed for the kitchen. 

Fitz took the stairs two at a time and watched Jemma toddle across her bedroom, tripping over the ends of her comforter. “I’m so embarrassed about last night,” she groaned. 

“Oh, Jemma, you - you don’t have to be,” Fitz said quickly, shutting the door behind him. 

“I behaved so badly!” she cried. “I like following the rules. It makes me _feel_ nice.” 

The corner of Fitz’s mouth quirked up as he watched her belly-flop onto her bed. “You said the same thing about the tequila last night, Simmons.” He sat beside her where she’d curled up onto her pillows and tickled the bottom of her exposed foot. “As I recall, you said, ‘Being bad can be good too, Fitz!’” 

“Good?” She lifted her head to look at him blearily. “It was awful. I feel sick even thinking about it.” 

“Which -” Fitz cleared his throat and shifted away quickly, leaning back on his hands and then, deciding against that, putting his forearms on his thighs . “Which part?” 

“All of it. It never happened. Fitz, promise me-” She wiggled around so that she could grab his hand. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone. It would ruin my reputation at school.” 

“Right,” he breathed out, looking away. She frowned, about to ask him what was wrong, but the door burst open and her brothers darted in, Edmund gleefully singing, “Jemma had her stomach pumped, Jemma had her stomach pumped!” 

“You little monster!” Jemma yelled, grabbing a foam model of the brain from her bedside table and hurling it towards the door. Edmund shut the door so the brain bounced off it, but they could hear the little boys still reliving their favorite part of Jemma’s birthday loudly throughout the house. There was a long silence within the room as Jemma tried to remember anything from the night before. “Can’t believe I was out of it the whole time we were in the hospital. I’d have had so many questions to ask about the biological interactions of alcohol in the body -- How did we get home, by the way, from the hospital?”

“My mum picked us up,” Fitz said. “They needed a parent’s name and I didn’t want to give yours, but- She thinks it’s all my fault, by the way,” he chided, looking sideways at her. “Somehow she’s come to think you’re the angel and I’m the terrible influence, devil child, blah blah blah.” 

“Well, you are,” Jemma teased, sitting up without relinquishing her blanket burrito. 

Fitz looked down at his hands, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Well now, I have to go with her to her pilates class every other day for a fortnight. I could be using that time for research!” 

Jemma matched his pained expression sympathetically. “What a nightmare.” She reached out to squeeze his hand. 

“Could be worse,” he murmured. She tilted her head, so he continued, “Daisy Johnson works at the health center where my mom does pilates.” He tapped two fingers against his lips significantly, looking at her with raised eyebrows. 

She rolled her eyebrows. “Yeah, right.” 

“What?” he asked indignantly. 

“Daisy Johnson?” she scoffed, leaning towards him. 

“Yeah?” 

“Forget it, even I want to sleep with her.” Her laugh blew a strand of her hair up, and he reached out almost unconsciously to tuck it behind her ear. 

“Well, if you must know, Simmons, she has been giving me the eye.” 

“She’s probably just wondering why you haven’t squeezed that zit on your forehead,” Jemma whispered, squinting one eye at him. 

“Sod off, Simmons--” he groaned, leaning away from her. 

“No, come here,” she laughed, grabbing his shoulders. “I can do it for you-”

He batted away her hands. “Don’t touch me--”

She reached for his face and he swooped in to tickle her stomach, collapsing on top of her as it devolved into an all-out war. When her mother came up half an hour later to check if Fitz was still there, they were side by side on the pillows, Jemma under her covers and Fitz on top, and they were talking about dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: It’s almost time for the senior dance! Who will go with whom??? 
> 
> Also, if anyone wants to make manips.... Always welcome. 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth there as well.


	2. Unlucky Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma gives Fitz some dating advice and they both get dates to the dance, which causes some tension between them.

Warmer weather and the approaching end of their senior year meant more evenings spent on the beach, the library’s musty air replaced by brisk sea breezes and campfires. Fitz followed Jemma mostly reluctantly through the tall grasses between the parking lot and the sand, carrying a cooler of beer and snacks while she tripped over the blanket they always shared. They’d both eventually gotten over their hesitance towards the outdoors and towards other people, though to differing degrees and never completely. 

Which was why, though most of the rest of their small class was also spread out on the shore, they spent the majority of their time together, squatting at the shoreline to point out almost invisible sea insects before leaping back as the icy water reached their toes; Jemma attempting to give Fitz a piggy-back ride that sent them both toppling; Fitz working himself up into a handstand, Jemma laughing at his floppy hair even as she kept his shirt from falling down as he’d asked her to. That last one ended when Daisy Johnson walked by and waved at Fitz, whose arms suddenly gave out beneath him. Jemma just rolled her eyes and strode away to talk to Angie and some of the other girls from their year. 

Fitz glanced away to watched Daisy making her way down the beach in cutoff denim shorts and a bikini top, and by the time he’d looked back at the group of girls, Jemma was no longer with them. He felt an instinctive twist of panic in his gut, even here, where he knew they were safe, but she was just talking to Will Daniels, the class stud, an American transfer. Fitz scoffed and went to set up their blanket. 

Jemma joined him not long after, dropping down onto the blanket and looking mightily pleased with herself. At some point she’d tugged on one of his cardigans against the chill. She accepted a beer from him and clinked it against his own, looking over at the now-roaring bonfire. 

Fitz followed her gaze. Will Daniels was shirtless, doing push-ups with a girl sitting on his back, giggling. 

“What a floozy,” he said before he could help himself. He almost regretted it, but this was the sort of thing they would laugh at together, or they used to. 

“He’s rather good-looking, though,” Jemma responded, turning to raise her eyebrows at Fitz. “He invited me to the school dance.” 

Fitz let out a stuttering fake laugh. “What did you say?” 

“I said no, _obviously_.” She gave him an exasperated look. “I’m going with you, or have you forgo-”

“Fitz!” Daisy Johnson managed to somehow float over the sand as she approached them. “I missed you at the health center today! Is your mum okay?” 

She stopped just in front of him so that the light from the fire lit her from behind, her long dark hair stirring gently in the breeze. Fitz’s eyes traveled up her long, bare legs, before jumping to her eyes as he blushed deeply. 

“No! I mean, yes, my mum’s okay, but I didn’t - I wasn’t there - obviously, you just said that - she just needed to rest up, been going at it too hard - not _it_ \--” 

Jemma was rather enjoying watching him squirm. 

“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” Daisy interrupted, patting Fitz’s head and smiling as if he hadn’t just floundered around for the better part of a minute. 

“Right-o!” As soon as Daisy was out of earshot, Fitz turned to Jemma. “ _Right-o?_ Jemma, why didn’t you stop me?” 

“You’re embarrassing,” she chuckled, leaning forward to wrap her arms around her legs. 

“She’s definitely into me, though,” he said thoughtfully as he ran the conversation over again. Daisy kept glancing at them from where she was talking with some of the other students. 

“You’re lucky she didn’t break an ankle tripping over your tongue,” Jemma said heatedly. 

“Okay then,” Fitz said, just as fiercely, turning to face her. “If you’re such a smooth operator, give me some tips! How do I go about seducing a woman who’s so obviously out of my league?”

Jemma wanted to tease him for every other word he’d used, but he looked so earnest that she bit her lip instead. “Seriously?” 

“Yes, Simmons. Consider me your test subject.” He didn’t look away from her searching gaze and she finally had to break the contact herself, uncomfortable for no apparent reason. 

“Hmm. Well, from what I have gathered from conversations with the other girls, they prefer someone who’s more, well - oh, there’s no good way to put this - _experienced_.” 

Fitz groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “Not this again-” 

“There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, Fitz.” 

“Keep your voice down!” he squeaked, head jerking up. 

“Fitz,” she said, suddenly serious as she rested a hand on his arm. “She’d be lucky to have you. Virginity or not.” 

He smiled at her gratefully. “That’s sweet, Jemma. Now give me something I can actually work with.” 

“Alright.” She contemplated for a moment. “First, you have to be cool.” 

Fitz squinted an eye at her. “Cool like leather jacket and motorcycle cool, or cool like suit and tie cool?”

“Cool like hard-to-get cool. Ignore her. Stop acting like a puppy panting after her. No, admit it, Fitz, you’re a bit of an open book when it comes to your emotions.” 

Fitz looked away again. “If you say so.” 

“Second, make her feel like you’ve seen something in her no one else has.” 

“Where are you getting this all from, Simmons?” he cut in. “I know for a fact you’ve not been to a sleepover in your life. Are you reading those trashy romances again?” 

“These aren’t complicated ideas, Fitz,” Jemma chided him, though he thought she blushed a bit. “I’m speaking from the heart. Well, that’s biologically inaccurate, but you understand the metaphor. There are certain things people want from a potential romantic partner. Being seen, feeling special -- that’s important.” 

“Right. So, look deep into her soul...while also ignoring her?” 

“Yes.” 

He laughed, shifting his legs out in front of them so his thigh just brushed Jemma’s hip. “There seem to be a lot of uncontrolled variables.” 

“Maybe you’ll have to let go a bit.” 

“Says Jemma Simmons,” he scoffed. She rolled her eyes - again; he’d really have to start counting to see if she could top her all-time daily record - and they sat in comfortable silence for a moment. Well, comfortable on Jemma’s end. Fitz, meanwhile, was working himself up to asking, “And, er, what about the - er, the other stuff - like-”

“Sex? Fitz, this _is_ about sex. It’s all connected.” 

“Real emotional depths you’ve got,” he teased. “It’s all about the physical to you?” 

“Just because I have a healthy libido-”

“La la la la la,” Fitz said loudly, covering his ears. “I can’t hear you-”

“Fitz,” she laughed, falling forward onto him as she attempted to pull his hands away. “I’ve stopped.” 

He grinned at her, their hands still clasped between them. 

Jemma let out a shuddering sigh, then said quickly, “You should ask her to the dance. I know she’d say yes.” 

“But we always go to these stupid things together--”

“Take her, Fitz. It obviously means a lot to you.” 

He stared at her, mouth open. Her words were nothing but kindness and support but there was a challenge in her eyes when they latched onto his. He quickly released her hands. 

“Great.” 

“Great.” 

“Then you could go with Will.” 

“Yes, I could.” 

“So this is actually quite convenient for us both.” 

“Seems so.”

“Splendid.”

“Magnificent.” 

“I’ll go ask her then.” 

“Please do.” 

Fitz watched her for a second longer, certain there was something she wasn’t saying, but she clenched her jaw and wrapped her arms around herself once more, resting her chin on her knees, so he stood and jogged over to Daisy. Jemma stared into the bonfire, but even in her periphery she could see Daisy beam and press an eager kiss to Fitz’s cheek as she accepted. 

 

 

She managed to avoid him for the remainder of the week, though he could have easily intercepted if he’d tried: they’d long ago memorized each other’s schedules and routes. When her parents asked about his noticeable absence, she waved it off vaguely, fibbing something about his mum needing extra help in her animal clinic. Mr. and Mrs. Simmons exchanged a look, and her mum sat down next to her on the couch, her father scurrying out of earshot. 

“Everything alright with you and Fitz, dear?” 

“Why wouldn’t it be, mum?” Jemma snapped. 

“Because you’ve been reading that section on mitosis for fifteen minutes now. And lord knows you’ve understood mitosis better than your teachers since the fifth grade.” 

Jemma sighed, shutting the book. It was really the worst time to be distracted: exams were a week away, and her acceptances to the American universities to which she’d applied were contingent on stellar end-of-year test scores. 

“Fitz and I had a falling out. No-” She pressed a hand to the crease in her brow. “That’s not fair to him. It wasn’t anything he did. I just - I have to accept that he’s different now, that we both are.”

“Never stopped you in the past,” Mrs. Simmons said gently. 

“Mum,” Jemma whispered, blinking rapidly and looking at the ceiling, “These past few days -- it’s the longest Fitz and I have gone without speaking since we met. Isn’t that a silly thing to think about?” 

“That you miss him? Oh, love,” Mrs. Simmons laughed, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s hair. “That’s not silly at all. But you should tell him. I’m sure he misses you too.” 

Jemma spent the weekend working herself up to it and was all set to confront him after class that Monday, but Fitz beat her to it. Not two minutes into their statistics class, a message popped up on Jemma’s computer over the spreadsheet she’d been deep in analyzing. In their tenth year, Fitz had designed an instant messaging network for he and Jemma to communicate, thwarting the best efforts of Mr. Crouch, the only teacher who’d ever tried to separate them. 

_Fitz: I’ve got news_

Jemma lifted her head to see him looking at her eagerly through the rows of computers. She shook her head and pressed her lips together. She’d promised to make amends, but that didn’t mean she had to indulge him. 

_Simmons: Me too. Those exams won’t ace themselves. Talk after class?_

But the next message popped up almost immediately. _Fitz: Your favorite little scientist is a virgin no more!_

She knew he would be looking at her, anxiously awaiting a reaction, so she stared at the screen determinedly, clenching a fist to keep her mouth from falling open. 

She didn’t quite understand her own reaction. Of course she’d always expected to be the first one among them to cross that line. After all, before this whole Daisy Johnson thing, she hadn’t been sure he’d ever even _talked_ to another girl besides herself. And while she, Jemma, knew he was clever and funny and really quite handsome, she always assumed that came from twelve years of being best friends. The other girls had always seemed to think he was too awkward and weird. When had that changed? Not that it mattered. She should be happy for him. 

_Simmons: Who’s the unlucky girl?_

She knew, she already knew, but that didn’t stop her from crossing her fingers in hope--

_Fitz: DAISY FUCKING JOHNSON_

“Fuck!” Jemma had meant to only say it in her head but it blurted out, cutting through the stillness of the computer lab, and her hands flew to her mouth as everyone looked up. 

“Right, Jemma Simmons, headmaster’s office, if you please,” drawled Mr. Crouch. 

“Sir-” Jemma and Fitz said at the same time. Fitz was halfway out of his seat already. 

“It was my fault, sir, I had something to tell Jemma-” 

“So I see, Mr. Fitz. Congratulations.” With a cruel smile, Mr. Crouch hit a button on his own keyboard and Jemma and Fitz’s entire message exchange appeared on the front projection. 

Fitz sank back into his seat, burying his face in his hands as the classroom exploded into applause and catcalls. Jemma felt a twinge of pity for him - though now she could see that of _course_ the computer sciences teacher would have a way to keep tabs on their screens, to keep the pervy ones from looking at porn instead of spreadsheets. 

Jemma walked to the headmaster’s office for the first time with her head low. Fitz really was a terrible influence. 

But when she left the school building at the end of the day, Fitz was waiting for her. He took her books and they walked together the whole way home, thoroughly and genially abusing Mr. Crouch as if the last week hadn’t happened at all. _Not such a bad day in the end,_ Jemma thought to herself as she linked elbows with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the least angsty this fic is gonna be... We might have a couple more fluffy chapters but brace yourselves for the Angstnado. 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr - I'm grapehyasynth over there as well!


	3. Boy-Girl Friendships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma and Fitz go to the senior dance with their respective dates. Jemma engages in some sexy times with Will but things don't turn out quite as she expected.

Even though they were going to the dance with other people, Jemma and Fitz still had rituals they weren’t ready to abandon. Daisy was doing the whole photos-with-friends thing beforehand, something Fitz had turned down as graciously as possible, so they'd agreed to meet at the dance. He put on the suit his mum bought him, feeling distinctly ridiculous, then drove over to Jemma’s house in the car his mum had loaned him for the evening. Jemma answered the door in a robe, her hair in curlers, and stood with one hand on the doorframe and the other on the knob as she got a good look at him. 

“I feel like a monkey,” he grumbled. 

“Thought that was a good thing.” 

“Can you help me with my tie?” he sighed, holding it up defeatedly. 

“You’ll have to wait til I’m ready as well.” She turned when he hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Fitz, you can still come up.” 

He stood before her mirror, running the tie through itself in different configurations which never seemed to turn out right, while she dressed behind her closet door. To cover the distinct sounds of fabric sliding over her skin, he called, “I’m glad we’re talking again. For a moment there I thought I’d done something to really muck it up.” 

“Fitz.” Jemma’s head poked around the door, an earnest but long-suffering look on her face. “You’ve been beside me this long, you think anything is going to change that?” 

“‘Spose not,” Fitz said with a relieved grin, turning back to the mirror. He cleared his throat, though, and continued, “I just thought, for a moment, the way you reacted, I almost thought you were, I don't know, in love with me or something!” He shifted tone at the end to make it come out as a joke. 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, her voice muffled through layers. “You’ll always be the boy whose cat dissection I had to do because he was busy being sick on Mrs. Tyler’s projector.” 

“Good,” Fitz said quickly. “Glad that’s cleared up. I know boy-girl friendships can often be quite complicated--” 

“Fitz, sexual attraction works _within_ gender categories as well as between, you must know that by now-”

“I’m just trying to say, _Simmons_ , that I’m always here, if you need to, uh, talk, or whatever.” He was glad he could say this to the mirror instead of to her face. 

She finally stepped out from behind the closet door and he caught sight of her in the mirror. Her dark blue dress was modest, catching at the waist before draping elegantly to the floor, and she’d pulled her hair back so that a few curls framed her face while the rest cascaded down her back. 

“Fitz, I need your scientific opinion.” She made sure he was looking, then pressed her breasts together with her hands. “I have a bra that does flattering things to my cleavage, like this - Should I wear it or leave them as is?” 

He turned to look at her head-on, his brain short-circuiting as a wash of images hit him, visions he’d mostly been able to keep down when he was around Jemma. They tended to surface, for whatever pesky reason, when he was having sex with Daisy. Flashes of Jemma, trembling and chest heaving like when they’d just run a race in gym class, except she was naked and beneath him and her fingernails scraped his spine. It didn’t help that he had that excruciating memory of the ghost of a kiss they’d shared on her birthday, which let him imagine her lips pressing against his neck as she moaned his name--

“Fitz.” 

Yes, just like that --

“ _Fitz_!” 

His snapped painfully back to the present, and he held the tie in front of him in a feeble attempt to hide the very real reaction his body was having to imaginary Jemma. He cleared his throat as he looked at her, waiting for his answer. “Is it for dancing or for, um- the other thing?”

She crossed the room to him with a sly smile. “Who knows?” She grabbed the tie from him -- he shivered at how close her fingers came to finding him out -- and wound it around his neck, pulling him down towards her slightly. “See how the night goes.” 

She patted his chest as she finished with the tie before grabbing a clutch from her bed and heading for the door. There she stopped, though, her hand on the knob, her head tilted down. 

“Jemma?” he asked, moving up behind her. 

She turned to look at him, eyes suddenly moist. “Fitz, I know you were excited to drive us tonight, but I’ve told my dad he could. It’s just -- you know he’s not well, and we don’t expect he’ll be around for any of these milestones for my brothers, and I think he just wants to be as involved as possible while he's still here--”

“Of course,” Fitz breathed, touching her elbow with his fingertips. “You know you don’t even have to ask, Jem.” 

 

Mrs. Simmons insisted on a modest amount of photos before they drove off. Neither Jemma nor Fitz cared anymore about showing up in a used sedan while the other students had rented limousines, especially with the clear joy Mr. Simmons was getting from the process as he drove them, chatting about his own senior dance and the girl he’d taken, a friend who’d agreed to go to make the future Mrs. Simmons jealous. Jemma laughed out loud at this story, which she’d never heard before, and Fitz grinned back at her from his perch in the passenger seat. 

At the hotel which the senior council had commissioned for the event, Mr. Simmons pulled to a stop when Jemma spotted Will waiting on the front steps. He jogged to her door and opened it for her, taking her hand and helping her out. “Hey, beautiful,” he murmured appreciatively, leading her away without even acknowledging Fitz or Mr. Simmons. 

There was a protracted silence in the car, both men staring ahead.

“What a wanker,” Mr. Simmons said finally, sharply. He looked at Fitz. “Don’t tell her I said that. And he has a bit of a hog face, doesn’t he?” 

Fitz chuckled. “He does have a hog face.” 

“You know, I always thought that you two would -- well, that’s that, I suppose.” 

Fitz colored fiercely and looked back out the window. “Yeah. Jemma knows what she wants.” 

“I’m not always sure she does,” Mr. Simmons mused. Fitz cleared his throat uncomfortably and Jemma’s fathered smile at him fondly. “Take care of her, will you, Fitz? When I’m gone.” 

“Sir, you’re not-” Fitz didn’t know what to say. He’d grown up with Mr. Simmons as much a part of his life as his own mum. “I will,” he promised at last. “ _If_ she lets me.” 

Mr. Simmons laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Wise caveat. Alright, young man, I’m told you have a hot date as well. Best not keep her waiting.” 

The hotel ballroom had been made as hip as possible, and it slightly resembled the club Fitz and Jemma had visited on her birthday, if with more outdated music and no alchol, a significant downside as Fitz saw it. He should’ve thought to practice dancing, he realized, as Daisy twisted and turned in front of him, though he certainly never could have asked Jemma for fear of either being laughed out of the room or losing his self-control altogether. He had to remind himself that he and Daisy were already sleeping together and that what he did in that setting seemed to work for her, so he should just relax and take her cues here as well. 

He couldn’t help glancing periodically over to where Jemma was dancing with Will - a little too close, Fitz thought acerbically. She caught him looking and quickly shot him a giant smile. He returned one, and from there it almost seemed like a competition. Fitz was mostly sure this was in his head, but when Jemma stepped up against Will, Fitz pulled Daisy to him; when Will spun Jemma around and tried to encourage her to grind on him, Fitz gave up entirely and grabbed Daisy for a heated kiss. They resurfaced just in time to see Jemma roll her eyes, grab Will by the hand, and lead him out of the ballroom. 

 

The student council was really just encouraging the seniors to have sex by having the dance in a hotel, Jemma mused critically as she waited for Will to get the condom on properly. He’d been trying for quite some time now. She bounced one leg against the bed impatiently and he looked at her. “Sorry. Can I just--” She pushed his hands aside and slid it down onto him. He grunted in surprise and surged forward to capture her lips in a kiss, clearly finding the action quite arousing. Jemma fell back onto the bed beneath him, thinking only of the critical lack of basic anatomical understanding of so many sexually active teenagers. 

That thought returned to her several minutes later as she lay under a grunting, thrusting Will. This was certainly not what she’d expected when the other girls had spoken so glowingly of their sexual encounters. Frankly, she felt cheated. She certainly wasn’t getting anything out of the experience, and it was more than a little painful, honestly. She made a fist in the bedsheets and tilted her head back farther, looking at the ceiling instead of Will’s face. 

She felt a quick thrill of excitement when he pulled out slightly and reached a hand between them, but he just shifted the condom up slightly, not touching her at all. “Sorry, it was a bit tight,” he whispered as he returned to his previous actions. 

Jemma squeezed her eyes tight, trying to think of something which would make the experience more pleasurable. The image came unbidden, a familiar face, the mouth grinning crookedly, almost seductively, blue eyes darkened with want, jaw smattered with the stubble she’d often seen there after an endless weekend of studying -- she could imagine it scratching against her bare chest -- For the first time that night she felt a jolt of desire run through her. 

“F---!” 

She turned her head into the pillow in time to muffle the rest of the word. When she glanced nervously up at Will, his eyes were unfocused. “What was that, babe?” he groaned. 

“Nothi -- Fuck?” Yes, that seemed like something people would say mid-coitus. “Fuck me, Will.” 

Will moaned and thrust once more before coming apart and rolling off of her. 

“Jesus, that was good,” he panted. 

“Oh - yes. That it _was_ , good,” she said slowly, patting his chest tentatively as he pulled her to him and kissed her head. 

Determined to not let it end that way, Jemma ran a hand down his chiseled abs and had just grazed the tip of Will’s now thoroughly flaccid cock when she realized she was touching skin, not latex. 

“Where is it?” she gasped. 

“It’s right there, baby,” he said sleepily, trying to guide her hand.

“The condom!” she snapped. “Where is the _condom_?”

“I dunno --”

Jemma lifted the sheet, looking frantically around them, pushing him aside to look under his back. “It can’t have just disappeared--” 

A sudden, terrible thought hit her. 

 

As soon as she’d done as thorough of a self-examination as she could, considering the circumstances, Jemma grabbed Will’s suit jacket - the nearest item of clothing - and her clutch and sprinted from the room and down the hallway, slamming on the elevator buttons as she dialed. Fitz picked up on the second ring. 

“Jemma!” he shouted.

“Thank God, Fitz, where are you?” Of course this was one of those fancy hotels with an actual man in the elevator to help visitors. How to phrase this delicately? 

“Still dancing. They’re kicking us out soon, though, should I call your dad?”

“No, Fitz, I need your help -- there’s been an accident--” 

“What?! -- Jemma, are you alright?!”

“No, not -- not that kind of accident, more a malfunction--” 

“Christ, Jemma, don’t do that to me!” 

“I meant there was a malfunction, with the thing, with Will-”

“Ah, didn’t need to know that. That happens though, Jemma. Can’t say I’m surprised, he talks a big talk but we all know he--”

“The condom, Fitz, the condom! It came off inside my vagina and at present I am unable to locate it!” 

_Oh, and I also may have almost screamed your name while another man was inside me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I'm not a Will fan but I'm also not a hardcore Will hater. He made sense for this character -- didn't mean to drive him further into fandom hate hell!! 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr -- I'm grapehyasynth over there as well!


	4. Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz and Jemma discuss their dreams and Jemma deals with some unfortunate developments...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, guys, the less fun parts are coming :( :( :( Hope you'll stick with it anyway!!!

“The condom, Fitz, the condom! It came off inside my vagina and at present I am unable to locate it!” 

The phone fell from Fitz’s ear just as the elevator doors chimed open and Jemma, wearing only a man’s suit jacket wrapped around her, looked up at him.

“That’s way more information than I needed,” he choked out, but next second she had started to cry and he forgot everything else as she crumpled and he stepped forward to catch her and cradle her in his arms. Across the room he saw Daisy stop dancing, looking concerned, but Fitz had no illusions about where his priorities lay at this moment. Stooping to pick up his phone, he had the elevator attendant hail a cab to take them to the hospital. 

Fitz felt even more miserable about the scandalous situations in which he’d recently been imagining himself and Jemma as he sat in the waiting room, both legs jiggling as he tried and failed to read the outdated science magazines they displayed. He’d offered to go into the emergency room with her but they’d both blanched at the thought of him being there for...whatever exactly it would be they’d need to do to remove the...thing. Fitz groaned, feeling sick just thinking about it. At least he was in a hospital if he actually did fall ill - 

The door to the emergency room opened and Jemma shuffled out, looking thoroughly miserable. 

“All better then?” Fitz asked bracingly, moving to her. 

She nodded but didn’t meet his gaze. 

“Oh--” Fitz darted back to the seat he’d been occupying and grabbed her dress and shoes. “Will dropped these off. He - uh - he said he had somewhere to be, so he couldn’t stay, but-” 

“I’ll go change then,” Jemma said dully, accepting her clothing. She didn’t move, though, and looked up at Fitz with glassy eyes. “Did you call my parents?” 

“Yeah, but they don’t know what happened - told them we were all going to the Rooster for burgers. Daisy’s mum offered to verify that if need be.” 

“That was sweet of her,” Jemma mumbled. 

“You’d like her, she’s -- ah, never mind.” Fitz scratched behind his ear awkwardly. “I’ll just wait out here, then? We can get a cab when you’re ready to go. My treat.” 

She smiled at him for the first time, and though it looked mostly forced, he warmed at the sight. “Thank you, Fitz. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

“You won’t ever have to find out.” 

 

 

The cabbie dropped them off at Jemma’s house in the hours between midnight and dawn, when her parents were least likely to wake up at her return. Fitz paid the driver and watched him drive off before turning to say goodnight to Jemma. 

She caught him by the hand, though, and looked up at him earnestly. “Let’s not go in just yet. I want the night to end on good memories.” 

Fitz, noticing that Jemma was rubbing her bare arms to warm up, suggested they sit in his mum's car, which was still parked outside the Simmons house. 

“Well, that ranks pretty highly as one of the most embarrassing experiences in my entire pathetic existence,” Jemma said cheerfully once they settled in and Fitz turned up the heat. She’d recovered nicely in the cab as Fitz reenacted some of his better dance moves from the evening. 

He laughed, leaning his head back against the seat as he looked at her. She did the same and they smiled at each other for a soft moment before she looked down, eyelashes brushing her cheeks. 

“Jemma,” Fitz whispered impulsively. 

“Hmm?”

“Let’s go somewhere.” 

“The Rooster should still be open. I actually could go for a burger-” 

“No,” he said urgently, and she glanced back up at him. “I meant -- we have to get out of this town, out of this life. Somewhere like - Boston.” 

“That’s the plan, isn’t it?” she said softly. “MIT and all that?” 

“I know, I just -- I feel like we’re drifting, not necessarily apart but not in the same direction anymore and I - it’s all we’ve ever wanted, right, to go to MIT together and redefine our respective scientific fields and -- if that’s not what you want anymore--” 

“Fitz, it’s everything I want.” 

He felt brave in the intimate stillness of the front seat of the car, so he stretched out his arm to rest on the back of her seat. She tilted her head to rub her forehead against his hand, looking quite like a sleepy cat. 

“We’ve sent in our applications, Fitz. All we can do is wait. Obviously there are quite a number of respectable institutions in England--”

“And Scotland!” 

“ _And_ Scotland, for back-up if we need them.” 

“Back-up,” Fitz scoffed. “MIT would be lucky to have us. They’ll come begging.” 

“Someone’s feeling a little cocky,” she said fondly, slapping his thigh with the back of her hand and then letting it rest there, a gentle pressure through his trousers. 

Fitz swallowed. “I'm willing to be a little bold when it comes to my dreams, Jemma. Haven’t we always said we'd never stop chasing those dreams, together?” 

A yawn sent Jemma’s hand up to her face, and she grimaced. “Speaking of dreams, there are a lot of them I wish I were having right now. I’d best head in. Not a word to my parents, you hear?” 

“I’d never think it,” he chuckled as she scooped her shoes from the floor and swung her legs out of the car. Then, when she’d almost reached her front gate, he called, “You look lovely, Jemma Simmons.” 

She spun and gave him a wave, but he couldn’t tell if she’d heard him. He sighed and let his head fall forward to hit the steering wheel. 

 

 

Jemma got her letter a week later. There were dozens of attached documents extending cautions about visas and scholarship requirements but she saw none of it beyond the first line on the first page: _Dear Ms. Simmons, We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted..._

She yelped and dropped her schoolbag right there on the front step, turned right back around and ran all the way to Fitz’s house. They’d only just parted a moment ago, but this couldn’t wait. 

Fitz’s mum answered the door. “Jemma!” she beamed. Then her face fell suddenly. “Oh, love, this might not be the best time--”

“Is Fitz here, Mrs. Fitz?” Jemma panted, leaning around her to look into the small front room. 

“He’s a bit busy, dear-”

“It really can’t wait, Mrs. Fitz.” 

Mrs. Fitz sighed. “Oh, dear. I’d best make you a cup of tea then.” 

It quickly became apparent, as Jemma sat in the living room anxiously re-reading the letter, exactly why Mrs. Fitz had been so hesitant to let her come in. From above, where Jemma knew Fitz’s bedroom to be, having spent so much time there herself, there came a loud, rhythmic thumping as of furniture against the wall. And then, rising above that, just as the kettle started whistling, came a wail of a girl’s voice crying out, “Fiiiiiitz--” Jemma felt bile rising in her throat. 

Mrs. Fitz came running into the front room. “Jemma, dear, I’m so sorry, I never meant for you to hear--” 

“I’m sorry, I think I’m going to be sick,” Jemma gasped, grabbing the letter and sprinting from the house. She made it to the street -- however she felt about Fitz in this particular moment, she didn’t want to dirty his mum’s carefully tended front garden -- before she actually did vomit. When she was done, she stood there for a moment, her hands on her knees, gasping for breath. 

Mrs. Fitz came to the front door, calling, “Come back in, Jemma, love, it’s over now and I’ve already made your tea-” 

A window scraped open on the second floor. “Mum, did I hear you say Jemma was here?” 

Jemma didn’t even turn to look. She ran back the way she’d come just moments before, the letter crumpled, forgotten, in her fist. The minute she got home she was sick again, and she sat on the floor of the bathroom, crying and shaking until her nausea subsided enough to stumble to her bedroom. 

For the second time that school year, Jemma found new ways to avoid Fitz at school and always made sure to walk with one of the other girls on the way home. But it became apparent after the third day in a row when she had to duck out of class to be sick in the bathroom that her reaction to hearing her best friend in the world having rather loud sex with Daisy Johnson was not one of surprise or some other horridly unpredictable human emotion but, rather, something even worse. Jemma knew better than to wait, so instead of heading to the library after class on Wednesday, she walked into town, twisting the sleeves of her sweater around her fingers. 

She carefully chose an apothecary in a section of town her parents would never visit -- she couldn’t chance running into anyone she or they might know. Fortunately, the statuesque blonde reading a comic book behind the counter was not anyone Jemma had seen before, though her height only served to make Jemma feel smaller and more vulnerable. She straightened her back and cleared her throat. 

The blonde looked up and smiled broadly. “Hey there. Sorry about that, the latest issue of Mockingbird is out and it’s kick-ass. Totally got lost in it.” She laughed at Jemma’s expression. “Yes, I’m American, but yes, I do know the chemical interactions which would occur should you accidentally take a combination of any three of our products, so don’t let the comic scare you. What can I do for you?” 

“Well, you see, I have a friend, and she was too nervous to come here herself, as her parents might find out, and you know what a nightmare that would be--” Jemma rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, rambling in her attempt at a lie. “Anyways, she had this thing with a guy and she’s been feeling sick and now she thinks she’s pregnant. Can you recommend a pregnancy test? I’ll take it to her at school.” 

“Uh-uh. I know you’re gonna hate me for this but if you’re coming in here with a story like that, I’m gonna make you take the test in-store.” 

“Oh, it’s not for me--”

“Look -- what was your name?” 

“Jemma,” Jemma said, not even thinking to lie. Despite herself, despite the conversation they were having, she liked this woman.

“I’m Bobbi. Jemma, if you’re worried about what your parents will think, you still need to talk to someone about this. I know you barely know me, but I understand how this stuff works and I’d be able to run through your options with you, your next steps. Please, for me, just take the test here. It comes up negative, I’ll sell you another one for your ‘friend’.” 

Jemma nodded, unable to speak, her heart hammering so loudly she didn’t hear what Bobbi was saying as she steered her to the bathroom in the back of the shop. With shaking hands she opened the little cardboard box and stared at the white plastic stick inside. 

“See, I know Mockingbird has a past with Hawkeye, but that’s like ancient history in my opinion,” Bobbi was saying loudly, clearly trying to give Jemma something else to think about. “Fine, give her a love interest in a few issues, but let her strike out on her own for a while, you know? She’s her own great thing. Doesn’t need a man, or woman, really -- because let’s be real, she could get with anyone she wants, but what if she doesn’t want to get with anyone right now? I just--”

She stopped as the toilet flushed. The door opened and Jemma stepped out. 

“What does that mean?” she asked, her face very white. 

Bobbi looked down at the stick Jemma had extended towards her, then back up at Jemma. 

“It means we should really talk about those options I mentioned."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth there as well!


	5. Clean Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma cannot catch a break and Fitz departs for MIT.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I can say is I am so, so sorry. Like, Jemma, I love you so much and it hurts to write this. Please stick with me guys -- it'll be worth it (I hope!!).

Jemma Simmons was a biologist in training, so she understood the science of what was happening inside her. By now, three weeks into her pregnancy, the little cells which had started as an unremarkable zygote were on their way to forming the respiratory and digestive systems, blood vessels would have begun to form, and there might even be a heartbeat. It was quite a lovely thought, really.

But Jemma was also a pragmatist, and she knew that a baby would mean putting Boston and MIT with Fitz on hold for at least a year, if not two or more. She’d seen older students’ paths diverted by unexpected families and as happy as they sometimes seemed, they never went back to school. A baby also meant exponentially increasing costs, which neither she nor her parents could afford, especially not with the already considerable hospital bills they were paying for her father’s treatments and the cost of university if Jemma were to try to juggle both. 

Jemma didn’t know if she wanted a child in the future, but she was certain she couldn’t have one now. She wasn’t ready, and it wasn’t in the plan. Which was why, after the pregnancy test showed positive, she went straight home from Bobbi’s shop, called the local clinic, and made an appointment. 

She’d determined to tell neither her parents nor Fitz about MIT or the pregnancy -- she’d settled on calling it that rather than calling it a baby, because really, it was still only a collection of cells at this point and miscarriage remained plausible this early on -- until they were both taken care of. She did feel a little hurt that Fitz hadn’t reached out over the last week, when they’d not spoken a word to each other, and she wondered if he’d been right when he said they were drifting apart. 

But he’d been busy with Daisy and school and his mum and if Jemma were totally honest with herself, she knew that friendship was a two-way street and that she’d been failing in that regard as well. The day before the appointment, she broke their silence. 

_Jemma: Fitz, I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. Please don’t hate me. Can we meet for tea tomorrow afternoon? Love, Jemma_

He wrote back almost instantly. _Fitz: Yeah we have a lot to talk about. Mrs. Sutherby’s at 3?_

She’d expected a bit more...something, a reaction, a query as to her health, an indication of whether he’d gotten a letter from MIT as well, but it could all wait. Tomorrow, everything would be sorted. 

That evening, a cousin of her mum’s came for dinner with her two young children. It was a lovely diversion from everything Jemma had swirling in her mind. They grilled in the back garden, savoring the first hints of summer weather, and finished off with lemonade and strawberries. When she’d finished hers, Jemma went inside to use the restroom and had just started back to the kitchen to help with dishes when she heard her mother talking with Georgie, the cousin, and froze in the darkness of the hall.

“It’s so lovely to see you and the little ones, Georgie, don’t misunderstand me, but at the same time it breaks my heart seeing Richard playing with them. He’s always wanted grandkids, you know, ever since we decided to stop having kids of our own, and with the cancer -- well, we don’t expect he’ll be around long enough for the first one.” 

Jemma backed into the restroom once more, closed the door quietly, and leaned her forehead against the wood. She could no longer hear the women in the kitchen over the ringing in her ears. She felt numb and cold and in that instant she could feel her plans, her carefully charted life, crumble around her. 

She didn’t want this child, not yet, but her father needed it. It seemed a small thing to offer him when she considered how hard he had worked to hold their family together through an eviction and long stretches of unemployment. She remembered how carefully he had tended for her after her scoliosis surgery, while her mother went back to work, how it had been just after her first brother’s birth and he would cradle the baby in one arm while he stroked Jemma’s hair and told her stories of their family history and the women who had raised and inspired him and how he had no doubt that one day she too would rule her own little corner of the world. 

When she was sure the kitchen would be empty, Jemma made her way almost unconsciously upstairs. She called the clinic to cancel her appointment, calmly explaining that her circumstances had changed. As soon as she ended the call, she finally began to cry, silently and steadily, as she sat at her desk and tore the letter from MIT into little pieces. Only later that night, when she had cried herself dry and put on a good face for their visitors, would she return to put the scraps back together, thinking that maybe it could be a dream deferred, maybe she could ask for a delayed start, maybe someday she would still go. 

She had never felt so alone, and she had never needed Fitz more, which made meeting with him the next day one of the most excruciating things she’d ever done. She squeezed into a corner booth at the tea stop, looking out at the gentle rain without seeing it, one hand picking at the melted wax on the candle in the middle of the table. Fitz arrived ten minutes late, as usual, sliding in across from her. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, as usual, but he was beaming at her, practically bouncing. “I’ve been camping with Daisy’s family the last few days--”

“You hate camping,” Jemma said without any real interest. 

“N-no, I don’t think I’ve ever said that--” 

“You said we had a lot to talk about?” 

“Riiight.” He lifted slightly in his seat as he dug into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Jemma’s heart dropped. “Can’t believe you didn’t call me the second you got yours -- you did get yours, right? I missed it, between our exams and then going off with Daisy’s family-- MIT, Jemma! I know we’ve talked about it and I considered it as good as promised but it wasn’t until I opened the envelope that I realized I’d never been really sure, but now --!” 

He was grinning at her with a fresh, open, honest, unbearable joy. Jemma forced a smile onto her face. 

“We did it. Jemma, we did it! But god, we can’t waste any time getting started on the rest of this paperwork -- and I don’t know if they gave you the same requirements but for my scholarship I have to leave right after the end of school, spend the summer there -- not that I mind, really, sooner we get out of here the better -- we can get an apartment, just the two of us, if you’d like, start conquering Boston before the other students arrive--” 

“Fitz--” Jemma squeezed her eyes shut. Every minute she was certain her heart couldn’t break into sharper shards and every minute she was proven wrong.

“Think I nearly gave my mum a heart attack, the way I yelled when she handed me the letter --” 

“Fitz.” She finally reached out to cover his hand with hers. “Fitz, I’m not going to MIT.” 

The riotous train of emotions across his face careened to a halt. The letter floated down from his fingers. 

“Not yet,” Jemma rushed on. “I’ve asked for a deferral -- just a year, then I’ll start. It’s my dad, Fitz. He’s getting worse all the time and I just can’t leave Mum to care for him and my brothers and be the only employed person in the household. Even if I went to MIT I wouldn’t be able to focus on my work, thinking about all they were struggling to hold together just so I could knock about in labs and pubs.” 

It wasn’t the first lie she’d ever told Fitz, but it was certainly the worst. She understood better, now, his fear of them drifting apart, for with every word she said she felt she cut off a thread which had previously tied them together. She was touching him, holding his hand, and still she felt herself miles away from him. 

“But -- Jemma, you can’t just--” 

“I have to, Fitz.” 

“But -- even if you come in a year, we won’t be in any of the same classes -- I’ll have taken all the intro courses already and moved up and you’ll be behind, and you always said that together we were twice as smart -- I can’t do this without you, Jemma--” 

“Fitz, you’ll be brilliant, as you always are.” Jemma could feel tears burning in her eyes and knew she needed the conversation to end as quickly as possible. “And you can send me your notes, record your lectures -- I’ll keep up, study when I can, maybe test into the higher level classes when I arrive and be right up there with you. You’ll see, it’ll all work out.” 

He stared at her, mouth slightly agape. The flush of his earlier excitement had all but vanished.

“Have you told Daisy, then?” Jemma asked, withdrawing her hand into her lap. 

“Wha -- oh, she’ll be alright.” He looked away, finally, and toyed with the corner of his letter. 

“She won’t be bothered, you abandoning her like this?” 

“Not a bit.” He laughed half-heartedly. “She’s gotten on me lately about cutting my hair.” 

“I love your curls,” Jemma said automatically. 

“Yeah, well -- I mean, it’s not just that. We’ve had an understanding all along that’s it’s to be only physical -- I think she got more involved but it’s been obvious my heart’s not in it.” 

Jemma could feel his eyes on her but couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. “Can’t be easy for her, then.” 

Fitz was silent for a long time before saying in a choked voice, “I can’t do this without you, Jem.” 

“I’m only ever a text or call away, Fitz. It’s just temporary.” 

He rested his elbows on the table and leaned his cheek on his fist, looking out the window. “You know it’s not the same.” 

 

 

Bobbi was the only person who knew everything, so Jemma found herself spending more and more time in the apothecary as the days to Fitz’s departure to Boston dwindled. 

“So let me get this straight --” she said for the fifteenth time. “Fitz is _not_ the father of your child?” 

“Bobbi, no! He’s my best friend in the world.” 

“Jemma, his name is, like, your favorite word. That’s a bit more than a friend.” 

“It’s not like that,” Jemma insisted tiredly, leaning her head back against a shelf. “Fitz and I never -- we’re not--” 

“Want to try that again?” Bobbi said slyly as Jemma fumbled. 

“We’ve been best friends forever, and besides that one time when I was in bed with Will and I thought about Fitz--” 

“Woah woah woah woah!” Bobbi interrupted, throwing her hands up. “You thought about _Fitz_ during _sex_ with another guy?” 

“Yes, but it doesn’t mean anything -- it’s only because Fitz makes me feel safe and understood and I trust him completely--” 

“It could also mean you want him to fuck your brains out.” 

“Bobbi!” Jemma groaned, burying her face in her hands. 

“But seriously, Jemma, you should tell him. If Fitz is half the man you’ve described to me, he’d want to know -- about the baby, about your dad, everything.” 

“He’s ten times the man I’ve told you about, Bobbi, and that’s exactly why I can’t tell him,” Jemma cried, her voice breaking. “Because he would stay, even though it’s not his child and I’m not his responsibility and even though it would mean giving up the dream he’s been working for his whole life. I can’t do that to Fitz, not ever -- and I don’t want our friendship to harden from our resentments over the things we’ve had to sacrifice. I can save Fitz from that, even if I can’t save myself.” 

“You don’t have to give your life up for your dad, Jemma,” Bobbi said quietly. “He wouldn’t want that from you.” 

“This is all I can give him, Bobbi. I’d hate myself if I didn’t.” 

 

 

Jemma drove Fitz and his mother to the airport, even though she knew it would send another knife of pain straight into her gut. She felt like she was falling and this was her opportunity to turn and get one last glimpse of Fitz before she lost control completely. 

After they’d checked their baggage, Mrs. Fitz -- who was accompanying Fitz to get him settled in -- complained of flight anxiety and said goodbye to Jemma so that she could pass through security and buy a drink on the other side to calm her nerves. Jemma knew for a fact that Mrs. Fitz loved flying but was grateful for the moment she’d granted them to end this mess without an audience. 

They stood facing each other just outside security, holding hands loosely between them, fingers dancing over each other, neither one of them speaking for a long time. 

Fitz ducked his head. “I could delay, Jemma -- I could ask for a deferral too, wait til you’re ready to come--” 

“You’re getting on that plane, Fitz,” Jemma smiled. She’d decided to be everything Fitz needed for today, to push her own agony aside in favor of giving him strength and support and the ability to disconnect. “It’s time.” 

“I’ve got something for you,” he said suddenly, as if just remembering. “Close your eyes--” 

She did as he said, imagining despite herself what it would be like if after all this time it was the gentle pressure of his lips on hers which she would next feel -- would she be able to let him leave once she’d known his kisses? 

Instead, something cool and metallic but with an unusual weight slid around one of her fingers. She peeked an eye open and saw that he’d hung a keychain there, a tiny dangling globe. Seeing her looking, he spun the globe lightly, then put out a fingertip to stop its revolutions. 

“So no matter where we are,” he murmured, “we can find our way back.” 

He closed his hand around hers and brought it to his chest. She looked up at him, unable to speak, and flung her arms around his neck. She had to go up on her tiptoes to keep from dragging him down. She finally let herself cry, great sobs racking her body as she ran through all the things she wanted to say in that moment. _Don’t go. Don’t leave me. I need you. I miss you already. I’m sorry. Wait for me. Stay. Stay. Stay._ But she would be saying them for herself, not for him. 

After a moment she realized that the vibrations reverberating between them were coming from both directions as Fitz cried silently into her hair as well. She made to move backwards and he tightened his hold. 

At long last their chests stilled, sobs wrung out. Fitz’s hands slipped to Jemma’s waist as he helped set her down, but her hands stayed at the junction of his neck and jaw. She slid her face down as well, and suddenly they were centimeters apart, their faces raw with emotion. His breath was hot on her lips and she felt every sensation from desperation to an ache of wild desire to devastation tear through her. He closed his eyes as they hovered there, and Jemma inhaled sharply. “Fitz,” she whispered as she leaned closer, but then his jaw clenched under her fingertips and he pulled back, leaving the air cold around her. Her forefinger trailed down his cheek as she settled onto her heels, embarrassed beyond belief. Had she really been about to kiss her best friend when he was about to start a new life, a better life without her? She had promised not to do this, not to make it any harder for him--

Fitz tilted her chin up with one hand. “Keep in touch, Jem. I’ll be back for a visit before you know it.” 

“You better,” she said more boldly than she felt. 

And then his hand was gone from her skin, and he ducked his head and turned his back on her, walking quickly to the end of the security line. He didn’t look back. 

_Well, you wanted a clean break._

She clenched the miniature globe in her fist. _I’ll always be with you, Fitz._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr -- I'm grapehyasynth over there as well!


	6. Back in Orbit

Peggy Elizabeth Simmons was born the last week of January. She was premature enough that Jemma cried for fear Peggy’s little head would crumple under the knitted cap. The midwife told her she was bawling over nothing, but Jemma’s hormones were all a muck and she couldn’t bring herself to feel offended. 

Hormones, she told herself, explained why when she was finally able to roll over onto her side with minimal pain, she picked up her phone and texted Fitz the first thing besides _Hope you’re well_ or _Cheers from my parents!_ for the first time in months. He’d texted and called faithfully throughout September and October but when she started missing his calls, hoping to encourage him to let go, he’d taken the hint too forcefully. 

_Hi Fitz. Sorry I have been out of touch -- like you I’ve been studying like crazy! Thanks for sending that latest lecture. You’re right, the professor does seem a bit out of his depth. Quantic physics isn’t_ that _complicated._

She sent that first message, then composed a second one. 

_My dad’s not well. Wish you were here._

Peggy let out a tiny yawn where she was tucked against Jemma’s arm. 

The last part was not a lie. Jemma’s father had completed another round of chemo but the good health which had accompanied his first treatment had not materialized this time. Mr. Simmons barely had the energy to come down to breakfast, let alone play with the granddaughter who had been the source of such unity and separation. 

Fitz never answered her text. She cried every night for a fortnight, though that might have been because Peggy was keeping her up and she couldn’t ask her parents for help when they were worn out with just keeping each other alive. She considered calling him, making an aggressive post on Facebook, going through his mum. But she remembered how this had all begun and why she’d let him go in the first place. So one afternoon, as soon as Peggy was old enough to take out in a stroller, she sent a different text and headed into town for lunch. 

Considering how far and how fast Daisy’s star had risen, Jemma had been a little nervous that she wouldn’t meet with her. Daisy’s international musical career had taken off once she took on the stage name Skye. Somehow, though, Daisy not only had the same number from high school but responded eagerly to Jemma’s invitation. 

“Jemma!” Daisy cried as she came into the cafe. She’d started wearing more leather and flashier aviator glasses but otherwise she seemed the same. She squeezed Jemma tightly before she noticed Peggy. “Oh my god, girl, is this yours? Sorry, _this_ is not how you want your child referred to--” 

“Peggy,” Jemma said fondly. “She’s quite new.” 

“I see that. She’s a cutie. Was it -- ohhh, Will, senior dance?” Daisy cocked her head knowingly.

Jemma had debated not bringing Peggy, precisely for this reason, but she needed to butter Daisy up and there was nothing quite as buttery as a fresh, fluffy baby. 

“Yes, exactly. But how have you been?” 

“Oh, you know, popping all over the place,” Daisy said breezily. “It’s completely surreal, obviously -- I feel so fortunate--” 

“I loved your last single. No, truly! The way you subverted all of the expectations for a pop song like that --”

“Well, I’m glad you saw it that way. I think most people didn’t get the whole subversion part.” 

“And what’s next? Are you touring?” 

Daisy blew out a long breath. “That was the plan, but I’m feeling worn out already. Thinking about trying to get a band together. Picture this--” She spread her hands dramatically. “The Rising Tide.” 

“I like it!” Jemma lied. “Very edgy.” 

They ate their complimentary rolls in silence for a moment before Daisy prodded, “What’s really going on, Jemma?” 

“I don’t--”

“Look, I like you, but we were never close in high school. So when I got your text, I figured there had to be something more behind it.” 

Jemma sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Please don’t think I’m a terrible person, Daisy.” 

“A little high-strung, maybe, but --” Daisy teased. 

“It’s just... It’s Fitz.”

“Ah.” 

“What kind of _ah_ is that?” 

“When has it not been Fitz?” Daisy asked gently. 

“That’s not -- He needs someone, Daisy. I haven’t heard from him in months and he didn’t even come home to see his mum for Christmas and she says he’s gotten very withdrawn, and -- I worry, Daisy.” 

“So why don’t you go see him?” Daisy asked around a mouthful. 

“It’s not me he needs. Not anymore.” Jemma busied herself with reswaddling Peggy. 

“Who, me?” Daisy laughed. “Look, Jemma, he and I had a great time in high school but it was what it was.” 

“What if it wasn’t?” Jemma asked brightly. “What if it wasn’t the right time? What if you could rekindle that?” 

Daisy studied her carefully. “This isn’t some kind of test? You sure you’d be okay with that?” 

“Of course,” Jemma lied, again. “If it would help Fitz, it would be more than okay with me. No pressure, only -- if you’re in Boston in the near future, I hope you’ll just -- consider it. Stopping in to see Fitz. I know it would mean the world to him. And to me.” 

“Does he know?” Daisy asked. “About Peggy?”

“No,” Jemma said softly, “and I’d rather it stay that way, if you don’t mind.”

“Part of your whole taking-care-of-Fitz-instead-of-yourself thing?” 

Jemma rolled her eyes, but it was not an unfriendly gesture. 

“You got it, Jemma. Fitz won’t hear about Peggy from me. I still think you should tell him, though.” 

 

Within a few weeks, pictures surfaced on Daisy’s -- or rather, Skye’s -- public social media profiles of her touring Boston with Fitz, whom she described as a “dear friend from home”. He looked, Jemma couldn’t help thinking, truly horrible. He skin was sallow and his face had slimmed considerably -- she hadn’t known he had any body fat to lose, but he had certainly lost it. The pictures haunted her for days. She would find herself staring at his forced smile, tracing his jawline on the screen, wondering if the stubble was a style choice or further evidence of his apparent descent in self-care. 

About a month after Jemma had met with Daisy, she was trying to simultaneously fold Peggy’s clothes while proofreading her cover letter for a promising position in a lab when a sharp knock on the door interrupted her train of thought. She marked her place with her red pen and wove her way through a landmine of scattered toys -- she’d have to clean those up before her dad got back from the hospital -- to the front hallway. 

And suddenly there he was on her doorstep. He’d gotten a haircut since Daisy had taken those pictures with him. It made him look older, much more serious, and Jemma couldn’t decide if she liked it. Otherwise he seemed to have stepped straight from the images on her phone, his eyes haunted. Her heart clenched and the hand on the inside knob of the door tightened until her knuckles were white to keep herself from throwing her arms around his neck.

“Fitz,” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”

He swallowed and looked down. “Home for spring break. Thought I’d surprise you.” 

“Well you certainly did that!” she chirped. His eyes narrowed as he looked at her but she had committed to roses and sunshine and wouldn’t back down now. “What a lovely - er, really lovely surprise, this is -- let me grab my jacket, we can go out for tea--” 

He stepped in -- into the hallway, into her personal space -- without being asked, stopping her hand on the coat rack. “Why don’t we stay here? I haven’t much time.” There was a hardness to his voice and expressions she’d never known there.

“I’ll -- I’ll just put the kettle on,” she said faintly, backing up quickly so that her face was no longer inches from his chest. 

As he turned to shut the door and remove his shoes, she hurried down the hallway, gathering evidence of Peggy as she went, stuffing it behind the couch and into a laundry basket which she proceeded to cover with her own clean clothes. 

“So how have you been?” he called as he followed her weaving path through the house. 

“Oh, keeping busy,” she answered vaguely, shoving a bin full of bottles into the sink and tossing a rag over it. “You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to get a job without a degree -- been taking anything that will give me money, really. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to find a job in a lab soon, though. Good place to start.” 

“Just for the summer, right? Before you start at MIT?” 

“Yeeesss, exactly that,” she said quickly. Without him to talk to, to lie to, she had forgotten all about her fictional plan of someday actually returning to her intended academic path. “Just a short-term thing.” She stood with her hands on the edge of the sink, not trusting herself to turn around. _Keep it light. Bluff along. He’ll be gone soon._

“You know, something that’s quite common at universities in the US is for students to get money for their eggs or sperm,” he said from behind her. “You could consider that. Though I’ve never heard anyone selling their breast milk. How do you find these pumps?” 

“They’re a nightmare, honestly, I--”

Realizing what he’d said, she squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the tears. 

“How did you know?” she asked, finally turning to look at him. He wasn’t watching her but was rather fiddling with the plastic apparatus, rotating it over and over as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “Oh god, did Daisy--” 

“No, Daisy kept your secret,” he said bitterly. “Even when I asked her flat-out. I’ve known since December, Jemma. My mum’s not oblivious, y’know.” It was the first time he’d said her name, and she felt like no one had been saying it properly for almost a year now, since the last time she’d heard it from those lips. “At first I thought she was barking but then it all began to make sense.” 

“I was going to tell you,” she whispered. 

“When?” He looked up then, eyes burning and shimmering. “When I turn up at the airport next August and you never show? When I invite you to my graduation and you can’t make it because you’re taking your daughter to kindergarten? Your - god, your _daughter_ , Jemma -- you’ve been my best friend in the world since we were six and you didn’t care to tell me you had a _daughter_ \--” 

“Fitz--” It came out in a shuddering breath because all the strength she’d performed for months now, all the tears she’d fought at all times except when alone at night with Peggy, it was all spoiled with him here, looking at her so like and so unlike he’d always looked at her. The kitchen felt smaller than it ever had and she grabbed her elbows with opposite hands, cradling herself. “I couldn’t -- You never would have gone-- And my dad--” She’d never told anyone but Bobbi this, and she still didn’t believe she was finally telling him. Surely the galaxy was about to be absorbed into a black hole for her reality had long ago ceased to include Fitz, or honesty, or not feeling alone. “My dad won’t live to see another grandchild, and I just thought -- I thought--” 

She was sobbing but he had surged forward to hug her, her arms trapped between them, and she couldn’t remember if he’d ever hugged her like this. It was apology and forgiveness at once, wordless absolution for them both. 

“Jemma,” he murmured into her hair. “Jemma, Jemma, _Jemma_. That’s not a decision an eighteen-year-old should have to bear--” 

“It was all I knew to do, Fitz,” she whispered against his collar. “Can you forgive me?” 

“Can I f-” He pulled back and held her face in his hands. “Jemma Simmons, you have given up your life’s goals to give your dad some final happiness and you chose not to tell me because you thought I’d then give up mine? I cannot fault you a thing.” 

“I wasn’t wrong, though,” Jemma said blearily, wiping at her tears. “You would have stayed.” 

“Not even a question.” 

 

She led him upstairs -- god, that sounded tantalizing -- to where Peggy was sleeping. In the same bedroom where they, as children, had shared music and dreams, they laid on her bed, Peggy between them. Fitz propped himself up on one forearm as if unsure how fully he belonged in this space, but Jemma rested her head on both arms as she watched him watch Peggy. 

“She’s been colicky for weeks,” she whispered, tracing a finger across Peggy’s flannel-covered stomach. “Haven’t gotten a wink of sleep. All I can think about is poo -- how much, how often, what color--”

“I hope you mean hers.”

They both stifled giggles and she nudged his leg with her foot. “Watch it, Leopold.” 

He had picked up Peggy’s favorite stuffed monkey and was toying with its floppy arms. “And Will?” 

“Suddenly had an urgent job offer in Florida.” Jemma was able to say this with almost -- _almost_ \-- no bitterness by now. “Haven’t seen a spot of support money from him.

In her sleep, Peggy curled her full hand around Fitz’s forefinger. His mouth formed an o as he looked at the point of connection, and Jemma fought the urge to bury her head in the pillows to hide the feelings she was sure must be raging across her face. In the later afternoon sunlight just peaking through the drawn curtains, Fitz, the boy she’d known forever, looked like a grown man. 

“Is this okay?” he breathed. “Am I doing okay?” 

“You’re perfect, Fitz.” 

The crease in his forehead disappeared and his mouth relaxed into a soft smile. His head settled sideways onto his shoulder as he looked down at Peggy. 

“Can I be godfather?” 

She looked up at him in surprise. 

“I didn’t know until the moment I saw her but I think I’d been thinking about it since I first heard,” he explained softly. “If you’ve already got someone--”

“Yes,” Jemma said quickly. “I mean, no, I haven’t got someone, and yes, I want you to be the godfather. If you’d like.” 

“More than anything.” 

 

Jemma found out that Fitz had been home for a full week before he came to see her. A full week they could have spent lavishing in each other’s presence, lost because of the mistrust and betrayal and distance between them. But the next day he left again, back to Boston to finish out the spring term. Jemma stood on the curb with Mrs. Fitz’s arm around her shoulders as a cab took him away again. 

“Don’t think I’ll ever be okay with him leaving,” Mrs. Fitz said tearfully. 

Jemma’s fingers lingered over her phone. _Stay in touch. Love, Jemma_ she had typed out. A fresh start, with honesty and open communication once more. 

She hit the delete button until the message was clear, then pocketed her phone again. He was still over three thousand miles away and their lives were even more divergent. Nothing had changed, not really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth over there as well. 
> 
> Please stop crying. I'm sorry, okay!!!


	7. Packing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma negotiates post-baby, post-Fitz life but continues to be drawn into his orbit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking some more liberties with the source material! Hope it works out!

_New text from: Leo Fitz_

_Fitz: Happy solstice! Looks like I’m staying here for the summer - taking some extra courses._

_Jemma: How exciting! Will you graduate early?_

_Fitz: ... Why would I want to do that? They’re just some supplemental biochemistry classes I thought I’d take for fun._

_Jemma: Well, that_ is _a superior field, you can only benefit!_

_Fitz: Whatever, Simmons. Daisy was in town again_

_Jemma: How is her band -- The Cresting Wave, was it?_

_Fitz: The Rising Tide, same idea I suppose. Her new guitarist is from your part of the Isles, Lance Hunter._

_Jemma: Oh is he the cute edgy one who’s shown up in her photos lately? ___

_Fitz: Don’t even go there, Jemma. He seems like a great guy but I get the feeling he’s not the kind of bloke to go steady._

_Jemma: Yes, that’ll be an issue, seeing as how he’s touring the world and I’m breastfeeding in my parents’ living room._

_Fitz: Grossss! TMI! And besides, you never know, Daisy’s been talking about a hometown concert at some point. ___

_Jemma: Great, set us up then, won’t you? Do you get free tickets to her concerts?_

_Fitz: Whenever she’s in New England, yeah. Hang on--_

_Fitz: ..._

_Fitz: ..._

_Fitz: Hunter wants to say hi._

A still popped up on Jemma’s screen of the guitarist in question trapping Fitz in a headlock. Fitz’s face was scrunched but he looked...better. 

_Fitz: Hello love! Call me Hunter, all my closest friends do. Don’t worry about Fitz -- he was in a right state when Daisy and I swooped in but we’ve cheered him back up._  
_Fitz: Me again. Me, me, I mean -- not Hunter._

_Jemma: What’s this about you being in a right state?_

_Fitz: It was just a phase. Finals and all that. Rough end of term._

_Jemma: No one there to ration your Crunchies so you didn’t eat them all in the first hour of studying?_

_Fitz: The sugar crash had me out for the rest of the day. No Crunchies here, though._

_Jemma: Pity. Maybe your mum and I can send you a care package. Have to run -- Peggy’s done with the dentist! Talk soon. Love, Jemma._

She’d broken her own rule and she knew it, but really, the communication had been at his insistence. They didn’t text steadily -- certainly not regularly enough for her to be able to anticipate it -- but when they did, it felt natural. It felt old, in its familiarity. She felt somehow closer to him than she had since before the senior dance. 

____But time zones and separation began to take their toll. For all his stated mission to maintain better contact with her, she heard from him less and less as he stayed in Boston for the summer, throughout the fall term, and over the winter break. He sent Peggy a Red Sox onesie for Christmas -- Hunter sent a matching one, ordered from an online British retailer, that said Red Coats in the Red Sox font -- but beyond birthday texts and the occasional query about her parents’ health, the texts dwindled._ _ _ _

____At last, as the second spring of Fitz’s time in university dawned, Jemma went to visit his mum. They’d chatted when they met at the grocer’s or the baker’s, but Jemma was so consumed with caring for Peggy and redirecting her own life that she’d entirely stopped visiting with old friends. Mrs. Fitz had been a warm presence, a second home, for Jemma throughout her youth, and she felt dreadful for neglecting the relationship -- and then doubly guilty as she waited on the Fitz doorstep with a loaf of banana bread, fully aware that this visit had more to do with the son than the mother._ _ _ _

____“So he’ll not be home again this summer?” she asked moments later in barely disguised alarm as Mrs. Fitz took a pause to sip her tea._ _ _ _

____“Seems not. He’s a good boy, and as much as I want to feel slighted that he hasn’t visited in a year, I know it’s for the best. Always wanted him to find his wings.”_ _ _ _

____“So it’s not--” Jemma wasn’t sure how to put this. “I thought it might be -- I thought he wasn’t visiting because the money--”_ _ _ _

____“As did I,” Mrs. Fitz chuckled. “Lord knows I’ve not got the money for him to be hopping across the ocean just to see his little old mum. But he’s been renting an apartment in Cambridge, I hear, sharing it with a lady friend -- Apparently even with his studies he’s found some gainful employment. Not surprised for a moment, he’s always had a bright mind, as you well know.”_ _ _ _

____“He does call, though?” Jemma asked sternly. “To check on you?”_ _ _ _

____“Less and less now,” Mrs. Fitz said wistfully. “I understand it, though, having left my own home when Leo’s father and I determined to start fresh here. You go to a new country and as much as the old one pulls at you all the time, you try very hard to put down roots where you are, just to be able to survive.” She shrugged slightly, folding her cloth napkin over and over in her lap. “And he seems to find some compelling reason to stay.”_ _ _ _

____Jemma catalogued every part of what Mrs. Fitz had said on her walk home. The infrequent calls, the nonexistent visits, the alleged girlfriend, the job and apartment, even as a second-year at university. He’d done it. Despite every attempt of this city and this life and even her own tangle around him, he’d broken the hold and moved on. She knew she should be happy that her efforts to release him had not gone to waste, but first, she allowed herself the grief she had for so long considered too selfish. She took down every remnant of him in her room, every object which reminded her of Fitz, and packed them in a cardboard box. The last memento was a photo of them from a class trip in their junior year. She held it for a moment too long, then touched his face with a forefinger and whispered, “Goodbye, Fitz.” With that, she locked the objects, like her feelings, deep within the closet under the stairs._ _ _ _

____Luckily, Jemma more than ever had her own distractions. She had found work in a lab in the city -- whatever they called their hometown, it was really just a village. Hired as a temp, she had so quickly demonstrated her worth and that her intelligence outstripped her own bosses that within a month she was promoted to a position usually reserved for graduates from Master's programs in advanced biochemistry and neurology. Not satisfied to earn merely the title, however, she supplemented her already exhausting schedule of Peggy-work-Peggy with night classes, determined to earn an undergraduate degree -- just the start -- by the end of the year._ _ _ _

____When the money became sufficient, she began renting an apartment of her own. She would have wanted to move into the city, but with her parents and Bobbi being the main support she had for childcare, she couldn’t afford it -- yet, she promised herself. She even began, ever so tentatively, going on dates, but realized when a man spent the night and Peggy asked if he were her father that putting that particular aspect of her life on hold until Peggy were a bit older might be optimal._ _ _ _

____Her father, as if to spite the doctors’ best estimates, was still alive, though he was a feeble shadow of the man he’d been and needed constant care. Jemma caught herself wondering not infrequently whether she could have waited, whether he would have survived long enough for a grandchild who was planned and who had both parents, but she also knew that nothing gave her father as much joy as Peggy. Would he even have lived as long as he had without her? Jemma wondered darkly, when the feelings which were supposed to be locked under her parents’ stairs somehow found their way out, whether _she_ would have lived this long without Peggy. _ _ _ _

____Peggy, meanwhile, showed every indication of having inherited Jemma’s intelligence and curiosity. Jemma dusted off her own childhood chemistry set, and though Peggy was quickly a master with it, she showed more interest in Judo, which Jemma simply didn’t know how to deal with. At five, Peggy began at the same school which Jemma herself had attended. Dropping her off, Jemma was thrown forcibly back to her own first day of school, to meeting Fitz, and with a pang she realized that she hadn’t thought of him in months._ _ _ _

____They were now both 23. Fitz had begun a job in Boston which his mum didn’t understand well enough to explain but every indication -- when he called for his mum’s birthday -- was that he was doing quite well for himself. He had moved into a bigger, fancier apartment; if ever there were lingering doubts that financial reasons held him back from visits to home, those were quickly dispelled. He appeared infrequently in Daisy’s Instagram photos, whenever she was in the area. It was during one such flurry of social media evidence of his continued existence that he texted her._ _ _ _

____She’d been asleep, and when the phone on her dresser first buzzed she grunted at it and slapped it, intending to dismiss the notification and roll back over. But the picture of his face, a grinning, candid shot she’d snuck when he’d visited that first year, stilled her hand._ _ _ _

_Fitz: I dreamt I was an arrow. Well, that little metal bit right at the tip. And I was just whizzing through the air.”_

It had been years since they’d had a conversation like this, but of course she remembered his crazy dreams, and she responded immediately. 

_Jemma: What did it feel like?_

_Fitz: Weird. Daisy reckons it has a sinister deeper meaning and that I should have my head checked._

She put the phone down for a minute, looking at the ceiling. 

_Jemma: Don’t worry. You always have dreams like that._

She almost added _She’ll get used to it_ but knew that she was digging, hoping to ascertain the exact nature of his relationship with Daisy or whether the “lady friend” Mrs. Fitz had mentioned years ago was still in the picture, so she left that bit off. 

_Fitz: ..._

_Fitz:..._

She had almost fallen back to sleep when her phone buzzed once more. 

_Fitz: I miss you, Jemma. Please come visit. Ok?_

____It was the boldest gesture he had made -- the most he had reached out, the most evidence of them ever having been best friends -- that she had seen in five years, and she could not deny the effect it had on her. She could have afforded the ticket herself but he purchased one and emailed it to her, with her approval, the very next day. Her mind raced ahead of her, for all Bobbi’s attempts to reel her in._ _ _ _

____Despite Bobbi’s reservations, she agreed to babysit Peggy while Jemma was away and drove her to the airport._ _ _ _

____“I love you, kid, okay?” she said seriously when she’d pulled up at the passenger drop-off curb. “Just...be safe. In more ways than one.” And she tucked a line of condoms into Jemma’s carry-on despite Jemma’s vociferous protests and fervent blush._ _ _ _

____Jemma waited until Bobbi had driven off before repacking the condoms into her checked luggage so she wouldn’t have to see the faces of the security personnel when they rifled through her belongings._ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth over there as well!


	8. Whiplash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma's visit to Boston is quite the roller coaster. Buckle up, folks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized I've done quite a bit in Jemma's POV so I thought it was time to check in with Fitz... Though it switches between them halfway through the chapter.

Fitz waited nervously at the arrivals gate, as far forward as he could be before security would shoo him back (he’d reached that point twice already). He clutched a bouquet of white flowers and stood on his tiptoes unnecessarily every few moments. With her plane’s listed arrival time she should have passed through customs already -- 

“Hi, Fitz,” a tentative voice said behind him. 

He turned and embraced her in the same motion. She stepped backward to absorb the momentum of his hug and they rocked back a few paces together, clinging tightly. 

“Hi,” he whispered against her hair where it covered her ear. 

“Hi.” She giggled at the sensation. 

“Welcome to Boston.” He tightened his arms around her waist and she began rubbing a hand up and down his back. 

“I quite like it so far.” 

He pulled back, cradling her face in both hands to look at her properly and pressing the flowers against her cheek in the process. She looked impossibly mature -- not life-weary, yet, thank god, despite what she’d endured, but older, definitely -- and he could see her running through the same thoughts as she took in his new, adult wardrobe, shortened hair, and controlled scruff. 

“Can we agree three and a half years is too long?” Jemma grinned, meeting his eyes again.

“Longest three and a half years of my life.” 

She laughed, then directed her eyes up towards the flowers dangling just into her line of vision. “Did you pick these while you waited?” 

“These, Simmons,” he said in fake annoyance, lowering the flowers to just in front of her, “are dove orchids. I thought, seeing as how in Hebrew Jemma means--”

“Dove,” she finished breathlessly. “Fitz, that’s beautiful.” Their hands met on the bouquet as she took them from him and inhaled. “Did you ever think about that? My name means dove, the symbol of peace, and yours means bold like a lion.”

“Our parents really mixed that one up, didn't they?” He scratched behind his ear with a cheeky smile. 

“So where do we start?” Jemma asked eagerly. 

“You sure you don’t want to rest up first? Jet lag can do a number on you--” 

“Fitz, we have 72 hours to make up for three and a half years of lost time. I want the full Leopold Fitz Boston experience!” 

“You’re going to regret saying that, Simmons, because I have every minute of these three days planned.”

“I doubt that, if your time management in senior high is anything to go off of.” 

“Alright, so I only have rough blocks of time allotted! We can store your luggage at South Station and take the city. It’ll be great, I promise.” 

They rode the subway into the middle of the city and emerged in the heart of downtown Boston. Jemma kept running into people as she craned her neck to look at the skyscrapers. “I thought Boston was historic!” she called to Fitz as she hurried to keep up with him. 

“It is, just hang on -- there we are.” They rounded a corner and Fitz pointed to a brick building that looked distinctly out of place among the towering steel and glass business centers. “Old State House. The American Declaration of Independence was first read from that balcony.” 

“So this is where the whole mess began,” Jemma said scornfully, and they smirked at each other. “Silly Yanks.” 

They walked the whole Freedom Trail, following a line of red paint and bricks through historic Boston, adding their own British spin to the landmarks they passed. Neither of them were particularly patriotic at home, but here, sharing this space that even after all this time felt slightly foreign to Fitz, they used the tenuous bond of their Britishness to find common ground again. 

“Clearly didn’t consider the symbolism of ending their path to freedom on this particular spot,” Jemma noted as she stood on tiptoe to peek over the fence into the cemetery that marked the end of the Trail. 

“Well, technically, you can start and finish on the Trail from any point and in either direction, so--” He caught her look. “But you’re right, of course, Simmons.” 

They ate dinner in the North End, the quarter of Boston famous for the luscious scent of pizza which wafted constantly through the streets. Jemma groaned loudly over a slice that had steaming sauce and melting cheese literally sliding off of it, and Fitz averted his gaze quickly, fisting his hands in the napkin in his lap to keep from reaching out and wiping away the dot of sauce at the corner of her lip. 

Stomachs full, they made their way to a sports bar and drank several beers while pretending to understand what was happening in the baseball game the rest of the patrons kept screaming at. 

“I think that man--” Fitz said, as Jemma giggled uncontrollably against his shoulder, “is trying to compensate for something, so he takes that large wooden stick--”

“Fitz!” Jemma tittered, hiding her face. “You’ll have us thrown out!” 

“...then he’ll run around in a circle -- diamond, they say -- while the other men fall over each other looking for the tiny ball -- again, something Freudian about it all, really--” 

Fitz was bored by the fourth inning but being with Jemma again was like taking a first gasping breath after too long underwater -- painfully reviving -- and he rambled on as long as he could to keep her laughing. Finally she slapped the wrong number of bills on the bar and swiveled on her stool to face him. “Next?” 

His throat constricted and he gulped. “You’re sure you don’t want to get some sleep?” 

“No time, Fitz! If you didn’t have anything planned I can Google something--” 

“No, I have something planned,” he said quickly, stilling her hand on her phone. “It’s -- well --” He knew why he was nervous. He’d thought about this a lot during his first year at MIT, when he still expected Jemma to join him someday. “The Museum of Science is having a special event tonight, and I got us tickets, but it’s -- I don’t know if you’re interested--” 

“Don’t they have a beautiful planetarium?” 

“That’s--” He rooted hurriedly in his pocket for the tickets and showed them to her, beaming. “That’s exactly what I wanted to show you.” 

The planetarium held special midnight viewings only twice a year, and the minute Fitz had booked Jemma’s flight he had searched to verify that the dates would coincide. They lay back in reclined seats on the floor of the massive, darkened room, waiting for the show to start as images of an impeccably starry sky floated overhead. 

“This reminds me of going out with Dad,” Jemma whispered to Fitz. “When he’d take us stargazing?” 

“How is he?” he whispered back, but the show began at that moment. It was a pairing of pop and rock songs with explosive visuals, some abstract and others celestial, and though the crowd was oohing and aahing, Fitz heard only Jemma’s delighted gasps and her little whispers of, “Fitz! Did you see that?” as she slapped his arm across the space between their seats. 

“That was amaaaazing!” Jemma gushed as they walked out, squinting against the harsh light of the museum hallway. “Wish I could go to one of their space-specific viewings. Do you come to the museum often?” 

“I did at first,” Fitz said, tucking his hands in his pockets. “It’s all a bit elementary once you’ve gotten a bachelor’s and a PhD in four years.” 

“Oh, I _see_ , Doctor Fitz, the plebeian science museum couldn’t possibly live up to your standards--” 

“You’re a cheeky little gremlin, aren’t you?” he grumbled.

“Excuse us while the rest of us catch up to your level--”

“Don’t act like you won’t have a PhD as soon as they let you.” 

“Two, actually. I’ll be pursuing them simultaneously.” 

“‘Course you will. Never could let me win, could you?” 

“And risk inflating that ego? It’d be a crime against humanity.” 

He came to a halt just inside the entrance to the museum and checked his watch. “It’s two now. We should get back, or--” 

“Let’s not,” she said quickly, and he looked at her in surprise. “72 hours, Fitz. Fill every moment, remember? There must be something to do in Boston on a Friday night.” 

He grinned. “I’m not sure you’re ready for this, but alright then.” 

They crashed a raucous outdoor frat party at MIT, a space in which Fitz could be fairly certain to not overlap with former peers or students from the classes he’d assistant-taught. As a challenge between them, they attempted to pretend to be current students, Jemma a new sorority sister and Fitz a brother from a different frat. With each conversation they changed their backstories and majors and sometimes even accents. Jemma had been talking for fifteen minutes to one student whom she’d convinced into thinking they’d been in Intro to World Religions together their freshman year when Fitz materialized at her side, holding a red plastic cup in each hand. 

“It’s not a scotch on the rocks, but it gets the job done,” he shouted over the music and screaming as he took a sip from his own drink and grimaced. 

“Cheers.” She knocked her cup against his and drank the whole thing in one go. 

“Jemma Simmons!” _That’s seriously hot,_ he thought. _Stop it!_ He wasn’t sure if he was chiding himself or her. 

“Shall I get us another?” she chirped, but at that moment a pair of frat brothers for whom one of Fitz’s fake identities had been apparently a little too convincingly chummy appeared behind him and grabbed him by an elbow each. 

“Requisite baptism, bro!” one shouted, and before he’d had a chance to even yelp in surprise they had tossed him straight into the swimming pool, pressed dress shirt and all. The entire party cheered. 

He surfaced immediately, shaking his head like a wet dog, and blinked miserably up at Jemma.

“Was this on the itinerary, then?” she laughed. 

“Definitely not,” Fitz grunted. “Give me a hand out of here, would you?” 

She bent down and extended a hand, but when he grabbed it, he gave a little tug and she tumbled forward into the water beside him. 

“Leopold!” she spluttered, gripping the wet fabric covering his bicep as she hauled herself up. “You absolute--” 

But he had frozen, panting, staring at her through the smoke and steam that hung over the water -- he hadn’t really thought it through, pulling her into the pool like that, not when she was wearing a white shirt that was suddenly alarmingly seethrough-- 

“I take back every nice thing I’ve said about you in the last twelve hours--” Jemma called over her shoulder as she made to clamber out of the pool. 

Fitz swam forward and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back against his chest and into the water, using his feet to keep them afloat. 

“72 hours, remember, Simmons? Anything goes!” 

She groaned. 

Fitz stopped drinking around 4 as it was quite apparent that Jemma would not be getting home of her own devices. When the party finally ended around dawn, they only rode two stops on the subway after the party before Jemma got fussed about there being so much of Boston she could see if they’d only go by foot, so they got out at Park Street and walked through the deserted city. At Copley Square, they flopped down in the grass in front of Trinity Church.

“The library’s got some nice spaces too,” he said, wrapping her in his cardigan and trying to bring her back down to earth. “You’d love it, perfect for studying til your eyes get all crossed--”

“That was one time!” she said indignantly. 

He leaned back on his palms and she squirmed to lay perpendicular, her head resting on his stomach. 

“I could have had this,” she sighed, looking up at him. “Boston could’ve been my city too.” 

“Still could be.” 

“No, no.” She rolled over, supporting herself on her elbows so she didn’t crush him, though her forearms rested against his ribcage and her chin fell against his shoulder. Her eyes were wide with alcohol-fueled self-conviction. “I don’t regret Peggy, though, if you must know. It would be so easy to resent her, but--” 

“But that’s not you, is it, Jemma?” He reached out to tuck a strand of hair back for her. 

“The odd thing,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard him, “is that she’s always reminded me more of you, Fitz, than of Will. That’s probably just because I love her.” 

She didn’t recognize what she’d said, Fitz could tell, or not its full import, for there she still was, her face so close to his, her eyes fixed determinedly on his, as if that were the most natural thing in the world, while he was suddenly having trouble breathing with the proximity of her. The brush of the tip of her nose against his sent not only shivers through his body but also a memory of a similar moment, years before, a heady, torturous tequila-and-lemon laced moment -- a moment which had ended much differently than this one would.

“You’re drunk, Jemma,” he said quietly, pushing her away by one shoulder. 

Jemma pressed forward, eyes wide. “I’m just happy to see you, Fitz!” 

“Why do you always have to be drunk for that?” 

She sat up quickly, as if his words had burned her, and turned her back to him. 

He sighed, passing a hand across his eyes. “Let’s get you some breakfast.” 

 

 

When Fitz let them into his apartment, Jemma couldn’t help but stare. Fitz’s mum hadn’t been overselling it: if the nice clothes weren’t evidence enough, the leather couches and floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the Boston skyline made obvious that he was doing quite well for himself. 

She only had a moment to gape, however, before there was a flash of movement from one of the rooms and a body collided with her. 

“You’re here! Oh my god!” 

Daisy Johnson was hugging her from the side, dressed only in a tiny nightgown. 

“Daisy--” Jemma stuttered, looking to Fitz for help. He was meticulously unlacing his shoes, avoiding her gaze. 

“I mean, okay, a call would have been nice, didn’t know you two were gonna stay out the whole night, but -- Jemma, hi!” 

It was quickly apparent, from the way Daisy moved with absolute ease through Fitz’s kitchen and pecked him on the cheek that they were together, that Daisy may have in fact been the girlfriend Mrs. Fitz had mentioned several years prior. Fitz busied himself with frying eggs so that his back was to them both while Daisy chattered at Jemma, demanding updates on Peggy and her job and the town gossip, Jemma’s brain faltering as she attempted to take in all the new information at once (but she was sure it was the jetlag finally catching up to her). Daisy only stopped when a knock sounded on the door. 

“It’s open!” Daisy and Fitz called at the same time. 

A head peaked around first, and Jemma recognized the guitarist, Lance Hunter. The rest of him soon followed, and he walked right up to her and hugged her. 

“The infamous Jemma Simmons.” 

“Infamous?” she crooked an eyebrow at him when he released her. 

“Oh, yes. These two had some quite interesting stories to share,” he grinned, shucking his leather jacket and tossing it familiarly on the couch. 

“Oh god,” Jemma moaned. 

Daisy laughed. “Don’t worry, mine were mostly about you being a nerd, Jemma. And this, as you may have guessed, is Hunter.” 

“We’ve met. Sort of.” 

“Uh, over text, three years ago,” Hunter corrected. “Hardly think that counts. I’ll need your blood type and three references before I go any farther with this friendship.” 

Jemma looked at Daisy nervously, and Daisy exploded with laughter again. “Okay, it’s only funny if you know how much Hunter has zero standards for friends,” she chortled. “Meeting you will probably be the most exciting moment of his year.” 

For all the apparent camaraderie Fitz’s fit, gorgeous, perfect girlfriend was showing Jemma, she was relieved to find an ally in Hunter. He made her sit by him at the breakfast table and whenever Daisy made a casual swipe at British culture, at which Fitz smiled politely but largely ignored, Hunter would mutter some scathing response to Jemma, just for the two of them. Between Fitz's forceful rebuttal of Jemma's advances and his abrupt distance thereafter, she felt suddenly cast adrift. And she began to feel a vindictive pleasure in the discomfort Fitz was obviously experiencing and determined to do her best to protract it. 

“So Daisy, is your tour on hiatus at the moment?” Jemma asked, proud of her own composure. 

“Oh, Fitz didn’t tell you?” Daisy glanced at Fitz with some affront. 

“Figured you’d want to share the news yourself,” Fitz mumbled into his eggs. 

Daisy turned back to Jemma, smile already back in place. “I got a recording contract. Finally! I mean, touring’s great and all, but it was really just to get our name out there, build up a fan base until the bigwigs took notice--” 

“Then she dumped us in the dust as soon as she could,” Hunter sighed. 

“Don’t listen to that grump, he’s playing for the studio album too. Anyway, the contract lets me stay in Boston, so I’m living with Fitz full-time!” She squeezed Fitz’s forearm. 

“That’s brilliant,” Jemma said, and if Hunter choked at that moment, it was because the toast was too dry, not because Jemma sounded not at all thrilled. 

Fitz had promised to take Jemma to see his office, but Daisy insisted they all attend her afternoon recording session. Jemma still hadn’t slept at this point, which she believed was the root of the increasing crabbiness she felt at having her time with Fitz hijacked. Not that he seemed to mind much, she thought bitterly as she sat outside the recording booth, watching Fitz laugh and joke with the musicians as they waited their turns to record their segments. He barely seemed to notice her anymore, as he gazed at Daisy as she sang and slipped right into this world of simultaneous glamor and grunge, neither of which she understood. She’d come to Boston to see Fitz, after all, not these other numbskulled, tattooed rockers. _And Daisy’s not even that good._

She snapped when Daisy came out for a breather and said to Fitz, “What did you think of that last bit, Leo?” 

Jemma snorted and left the room in a blind rage. She wanted to slam the door and bring the whole structure down behind her but it was a revolving door and she just huffed and made sure it spun violently behind her. She was halfway across the parking lot with no plan or destination when Fitz caught up with her. 

“Jemma! Where are you going?” 

“Home,” she snapped. “And I mean England. I'm happy for you, really, but I'm obviously just getting in the way of your real life, so it's best for everyone if we just forget this trip even happened.” 

“Your flight’s not for another two days, Jemma--” 

She wanted to shout in aggravation. Of all that she had said, _that_ was the part he’d latched on to. 

“Fitz!" She rounded on him. "We were out all night together while your girlfriend, rising star Daisy alias Skye Johnson, was home in bed in her little lingerie waiting for you, and you _never mentioned her_.”

“That’s --” She could see him trying to catch up to where she was. “We were just having some fun, like old times --”

“So that’s why you wanted me to visit? To have fun? Fitz,” and her voice was now laced with scorn, “you might be able to coast your way through life but some of us have to take it a bit more seriously just to get through the day.” 

“Wha--?” he pleaded. 

“I’ve birthed and raised an actual miniature human being and might someday own my own lab with my best friend and be able to pay down the debt my parents have accumulated from fighting my father’s inevitably encroaching death but you -- well, you’ve got a cushy job and you get to fuck a future Grammy nominee!” 

“Christ, Jemma, what the hell are you going on about?” 

“You left, Fitz!” she cried desperately. “I needed you, and you left!” 

He spluttered for a moment, then his face darkened and he snapped, “You never asked me to stay!” 

“You were my best friend in the world! I shouldn’t have _needed_ to ask!” She sucked in a breath the minute the words were out. It was a resentment she hadn’t realized she carried -- so thoroughly had she convinced herself that she wanted Fitz to have a chance at the dreams she had given up that she had forgotten how much she’d wanted him to give it all up for her. 

“Were?” he repeated, stunned. 

“Yes, Fitz, _were_. Because I flew three thousand miles to see my best friend and I thought I met him yesterday but this morning, without all the beer and adrenaline fogging my vision, I realized that he’s never been here. Because the best friend _I_ knew would never have been so self-absorbed as to forget his friends and family so thoroughly that he only calls his mum when he needs something and didn’t even notice when his _best friend_ was going mad out of her mind just trying to hold the fragments of her life together.” 

“Jemma--” 

“Your own life may be disappointingly shallow, Fitz, but that doesn’t mean you get to pull the rest of us into your orbit to make you feel better for a bit and then send us spinning away when you’re done with us.”

She knew she wasn’t being entirely fair, she knew she was drawing broad strokes across his actions that wouldn’t hold up to a more careful consideration, but she also knew that in the heat of her anger there was great truth that she had been unable to face. Fitz had gotten his life. He had gotten his dreams. He was 23 and had nothing in his way. To him, she was a convenient memory of a simpler time, and he could pull her out of the toy chest to make him feel less guilty about all he’d left behind, but he had no intentions of actually rebuilding the bridges to home. 

“I’m going home,” she said wearily. “Don’t try to follow me.” 

She’d taken Hunter’s number that morning, at his insistence on their becoming best friends, and she called him once she had walked three blocks and checked that Fitz wasn’t behind her. Hunter had to finish the recording session but he directed Jemma to his apartment and had a neighbor let her in until he could be back. 

He helped her rebook her flight, even offering to pay some of the change fee, but she refused. And when she tried to follow him into his bedroom at the end of the night, he gently rebuffed her. 

“Sorry, love, you seem like a great bird, but Fitz would have my hide if he thought I so much as winked at you.” 

“All the more reason to do it,” Jemma said venomously.

“And I thought I had some baggage.” Hunter shuddered. “Sure you don’t want to stick around longer and take care of that?” 

“There’s nothing to take care of anymore.” 

Jemma waited until she arrived at Bobbi’s apartment late the next day, flattened and pale from fatigue and travel, before she started to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really excited to write specific bits of this and then having to write other bits of it was like unghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I hope it played out okay!!! And sorry to go so quickly from happy Jemma at the end of last chapter to sad Jemma again at the end of this one... Hence the chapter title. 
> 
>  
> 
> I think part of the whiplash comes from their POVs... So try to take into account their horrible inability to explain themselves to each other as you look at inconsistencies between expectation and reality.
> 
> I was in the Museum of Science today and was like omg this should def go into this chapter.... So I added some Boston love from my own experiences to their explorations. :)
> 
> Find me on Tumblr if the comment section below is not enough for you to cry/yell at me. I'm grapehyasynth over there as well!


	9. Hitting the Fan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The word missing from the chapter title is Shit. Shit hits the fan.

The last thing Jemma expected in the weeks following her disastrous visit to Boston was for Will Daniels to come back into her life. But, as if the universe were course-correcting, he showed up at her apartment one day, having received the address from her parents, and for all her initial reservations, he was truly a changed man. 

He claimed to have done a lot of growing in the last five years, and it showed. After graduating with a degree in aeronautical engineering and hoping to apply for a position with NASA, he’d gone through a mandatory rehab program, during which he had reevaluated every decision he’d made, not least of which was abandoning Jemma and their unborn child. 

He cried when he met Peggy for the first time. Peggy had never fully understood the concept of “dad” but began to play around with the word and fit Will’s increasingly frequent visits into that framework. They went to the movies together; Peggy taught Will how to fingerpaint; he cooked them both dinner and even washed the dishes after, and eventually Jemma let him stay for glasses of wine after they’d put Peggy to bed. 

It wasn’t until she saw him shirtless on the beach, twirling Peggy through the air, that Jemma realized that she’d begun to think of him as something besides just the father of her child, as someone for herself. 

At one point she would have hated herself, told herself she was using him to compensate for something else, something missing in her life. But now, once they’d officially gotten together and she’d lay beside him at night, she told herself that she was tired of waiting. She deserved to be happy, to be loved and adored and spoiled. She deserved to be selfish. 

She had about two years of living that way, of experiencing a blissful little family, willing to ignore Will’s drinking habits, which were becoming more heavy and frequent than she’d like, and had even begun wondering if she’d say yes were Will to ask her to marry him, before her father died. For all that his disease had been long and slow and his eventual succumbing to it inevitable, the actual act of death was sudden. Jemma got the call from her mum right before she had to defend her dissertation to finally receive her PhD and completed the entire presentation in numb shock. It was only afterwards, vomiting in the toilet down the hall, that she began to cry. 

She realized when she got home several hours later and saw Will that she hadn’t even thought to call him. 

Jemma barely had time to grieve for herself, as she had to prop up her aging, widowed mother on the one side and Peggy on the other. She stood at the funeral clutching their hands, steeling her face into passivity. 

Kneeling at her father’s grave after the funeral party had dissipated, Jemma ran her hand over the flowers left there. If her dad had actually been there he’d have made some rough joke about needing to move the bouquets so his corpse could see the stars. Jemma laughed, and then began to cry in the same instant. 

She’d just noticed a bouquet of dove orchids like those Fitz had given her when she visited Boston when she heard soft footsteps across the grass behind her and turned to see Fitz himself, wearing a dark suit and looking about as broken as she felt. 

She stood, her hands trembling in front of her, and tried to find words, but she was crying too hard. No speech was necessary, though, as he stepped forward to embrace and support her. 

“I came as soon as I could,” he whispered as she cried against his shoulder. “I should have been here, Jemma, for you-- But when I heard, it was like all the years had dropped away and I was this lost kid again -- Sometimes I thought of him as the father I never knew. I thought, maybe someday --” But he broke off, voice pained. 

“My father thought the world of you, Fitz,” Jemma murmured, pulling back to wipe at her eyes.

He didn’t release her entirely but watched her anxiously. “He asked me, years ago, to take care of you. Seems like I’ve done a shite job of that.” 

“He’d be right pissed at us, you know,” Jemma chuckled darkly. “Some friends we are.” 

There was so much unspoken, so much still broken, between them, but she needed no one more in that moment than Fitz, her best friend. She started to lean again into his chest, about to tell him -- as she had not yet told anyone -- that her last words to her father had been a comment on the newscaster’s toupee, when Will came bounding up to them. 

“Hands off my woman!” he called jokingly to Fitz, tugging Jemma back and out of Fitz’s grip. Fitz’s hands slipped reluctantly from her arms and she shivered at his absence, even as Will hugged her from behind. “I was just talking to your cousin, Jems, and I have to say I found her a liiiittle bit dull.” He laughed against her hair and Jemma pulled away as she smelled the whiskey on his breath. 

“Seriously?” Fitz said, the venom in his voice barely controlled. “You’re drunk?” 

Will looked up at Fitz with a hint of recognition. “I actually find funerals really depressing, man.” 

“Because Jemma’s having a great time,” Fitz snapped. 

“Fuck you, _Leopold_ ,” Will drawled, jabbing Fitz in the chest with one finger. 

“Stop it!” Jemma cried, stepping between them. “Just -- stop it.” 

She ran away, not willing to face them, not willing to look at the shambles of her own life and have Fitz see how mightily she had mucked this all up. She was fatherless, best friend-less, and as things were continuing, she would shortly be boyfriend-less. A few years ago she would've considered it an accomplishment that she could share such a moment with Fitz and then let him leave without a goodbye, but now it felt sour.

The distance between herself and Will was inevitable, really, as he turned more and more to staying out late at night and coming home pissed while she clung to the edges of her life, holding off depression only by running herself ragged keeping her mum together. He didn’t support her in her grief, if he had even noticed it. She let it drag on longer than she would have, if he had given her an explicit reason to end things: if he had cheated or hit her or hit Peggy. But eventually she remembered her promise to herself to be selfish. Why wait for a calamity when her entire life had become unhappiness? She couldn’t bring her father back, she couldn’t fix things with Fitz, but she could cut herself free from this one unneeded burden. 

It was as she cleaned his things out of her apartment -- she felt a strange relief to have it return to her space, hers and Peggy’s -- that she found the letter, wedged between magazines to which Will subscribed but never read. By the date of the postmark, by the handwriting on the envelope, she knew instantly. It was addressed to her and had been opened, though she had never seen it before. It had been sent from Heathrow Airport the day of her father’s funeral. 

She read it there, kneeling on the floor of her bedroom.

_Dear Jemma,_

_This letter is overdue. I have written a thousand drafts of it every day since you came to Boston and every day before that, and none of them were right. But I cannot waste any more time._

_You deserve someone who loves you with every beat of his heart. A man who will be there for you when you need him but will understand that you are a whole person and that he does not own you. A man who lifts you towards your dreams instead of pulling you along towards his. A man who when he wakes thinks first of you, a man whose every action is shaped by how it will affect you and your lives together, a man who keeps you warm at night, in body and in soul. This is a lot to expect of any one person, but you deserve it, Jemma Simmons._

_I thought, once upon a time, that I could be that man. I have royally ruined any possibility of that happening. I have hurt you and used you and alienated you for reasons I could spend the rest of my life only beginning to explain to you, and I would still not be worthy. You are the strongest, bravest, most brilliant, most caring woman I know, and you are my best friend, always._

_I know Peggy needs her dad, and I long ago sacrificed any right to have an opinion about your life, but Will is not the man for you, for either of you. I have lost you too many times and I cannot do that again. I have tried to deny it by filling my life with things which can make me stop thinking of you, but I know now that I am not strong enough to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it. If there is any part of you that thinks we could be happy together, please call me._

_Love, Fitz._

She reread the letter three times, the paper shaking in her hands, before she dove for her computer. It had been two months since he’d written the letter, and how he he might have interpreted her silence -- _oh god_. 

“Come on come on come on,” she breathed as Skype started up. He was online, thank goodness, and she began a video call without even asking him first. Her whole body was tingling and she felt vaguely nauseous, but in a good way, if that were possible. 

“Fitz!” she blurted out the second the video came on, but it was not Fitz that beamed back at her. “...Daisy?” 

“Hey Jemma! What’s up, girl?” In the background there was the sound of footsteps and behind Daisy, Jemma saw Fitz come out of another room and freeze, seeing her face on the computer screen. “Look who it is, Fitz!” 

“Jemma,” he said blankly. 

“Come here, Fitz!” Daisy called over her shoulder before turning back to Jemma. “I’m so so glad you called, honestly. We have something to ask you.” 

“Oh?” Jemma was still recovering from the about-face she’d just experienced. 

Fitz hovered nervously behind Daisy, not meeting Jemma’s eyes, even through the video call. 

“Fitz and I have been together for so long and I was getting restless and my parents were asking questions and, well, one thing led to another and I proposed!” 

Jemma’s jaw dropped. She didn’t even try to hide it. 

“We’re getting married!” Daisy wiggled her hand in front of the camera, flashing a diamond ring. 

“Fitz hates diamonds,” Jemma whispered. 

“What was that?” 

“I said congratulations,” Jemma said loudly, forcing her face into a smile while her hands gripped the edge of the table in a vise. “That’s -- wow, guys.” 

“We’re doing it next week! In Scotland, at Fitz’s insistence, which is like, okay, I can deal with it, but whatever. It’s fast, I know, but we’re modern, and my tour starts in a couple of weeks so we wanted time to do the whole honeymoon thing--” Daisy turned to rub her nose against Fitz’s cheek and now Jemma felt _distinctly_ nauseous. “But what we need to know is -- will you be maid of honor? It’s a little unconventional but I don’t really have a ton of girlfriends and Fitz has got Hunter and, well, you’re basically the reason Fitz and I are together.” 

“Of course!” she heard herself say. _You really are the king idiot, Jemma Simmons._

 

Bobbi took the news harder than anyone. She read the letter and heard about the wedding in the same five minutes, and she didn’t hesitate to pull out a bottle of tequila and hand Jemma a shot. 

“Fun time is over, kid,” Bobbi said, facing Jemma with her hands on her hips. “I let you try to do this thing on your own but you’re a complete mess at this so you’re gonna need to listen.” 

Jemma blinked back tears from the first shot and held her glass out for more. “What are you on about, Bobbi?”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great having you around because my life looks like peaches and cream next to yours, but I’m sick of literally everything in your fucking life going wrong.” 

“Ouch. Thanks a lot.” 

“This--” Bobbi brandished the letter. “You have been mooning over this guy for, like, ten years and this is proof that he’s yours, kid. He’s always been yours.” 

“He wrote that months ago-- and anyway, he’s my best friend--” 

“No!” Bobbi threw her hands up and snatched the bottle away from Jemma, who’d been about to drink straight from it. “Don’t you get it yet, Jemma? _I’m_ your best friend!” 

“We just keep missing each other -- the universe obviously wants us apart--” 

“The universe doesn’t want anything!! Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with a scientist.” Bobbi took a swig of tequila herself. “Literally, if ever there were two people more meant to be together, it’s you and Fitz. Hunter and I think--” 

“ _Hunter and I?_ Since when have you been talking to Hunter?” 

“Since he called me--” 

“How did he get your number?!”

“He took it off your phone when you stayed with him after you and Fitz had yet another spectacular blow-up.” 

“How did he unlock it?” 

“Jemma. Your passcode has spelled ‘Fitz’ since you were both fifteen.” 

Jemma’s lower lip started to tremble. “Oh my god.” 

“Hunter agrees with me, Jemma. He loves Daisy to pieces but he doesn’t think she’s right for Fitz either. It’s like -- okay, here’s an analogy you should be able to understand. Say there’s a deadly virus going around and you contract it.” 

“Hey!” Jemma hiccuped. 

“Hypothetically. You contract it. Fitz, on the other side of the glass in the quarantine bay, has a choice. He can stay outside and watch you die, or he can abandon everybody else and potentially risk the entire human population, including Daisy Johnson, not to mention his own life, to spend the last few minutes of both of your lives trying to find a cure. What would he do?” 

“That’s the oddest scenario I’ve ever heard, Bobbi.” 

“But you _know_ Fitz would be in there with you in a heartbeat. He wouldn’t even question it! He might love Daisy, Jemma, but it’s nothing on how he feels about you. Did you know that he turned down a meeting with Tony Stark which would have single-handedly made his career for the rest of his life so that he could be at your dad's funeral?” 

Jemma looked up at her friend, the accumulation of years of miscommunications and misunderstandings and broken hearts swirling through her tipsy haze. “So what do I do?” 

Bobbi grinned. “We’re gonna crash a wedding.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHH only one -- two max -- chapters left!!!!! AHHHHHH WHAT WILL HAPPEN
> 
> Also I swear once this is done I'll continue the Chuck AU. I'm the worst. 
> 
> I never review my chapters so if you find grammar/spelling mistakes please lmn!
> 
> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth over there as well.


	10. Wedding Crashers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LIED! At least one more chapter, and then maybe an epilogue. I was gonna write it all as one long chapter but it's almost 1AM and I wanted to post this and not keep you guys waiting any longer. :) We're almost there!!!

“It’s not crashing if you’re members of the wedding party,” Jemma reminded Bobbi as they unloaded their bags from the cab. 

“Uh, if said members of the wedding party are planning on declaring one member’s undying love for the groom-to-be and thus destroying all hope of happiness for the bride-to-be, then yeah, it’s crashing.” 

“Shh!” Jemma hushed her quickly as Peggy rounded the car. 

“Mum, Daniel and I are going to explore the countryside a bit, if that’s alright.” 

“Of course, dear, just be back in half an hour, and stay together!” 

Jemma and Bobbi watched the kids race each other across the grass. Daniel was a new development, but he’d quickly become Peggy’s dearest friend. They were inseparable, in an effortless way that made Jemma’s chest ache with regret. Needless to say, Daniel’s presence at the Fitz-Johnson wedding had been mandatory. 

“Jemma, love!” 

Jemma spun to see Hunter striding down the path towards them, arms already spread for a hug. 

“Lance,” she said warmly. “I can’t thank you enough--” 

“Just hope you’ve got the balls to finally put us all out of our misery,” he muttered in her ear before releasing her. She rolled her eyes at him. “And you must be Bobbi,” he said appreciatively. 

“Well, Jemma certainly sold you short.” 

Jemma looked at Bobbi in surprise -- there was something in her tone that Jemma had never heard there before. And indeed, the way she was eyeing Hunter predatorily, Jemma felt as if she had intruded on something quite private. 

“Thanks a lot, wingman,” Hunter said in a stage whisper to Jemma as he shook Bobbi’s hand. 

“Wha -- I didn’t realize I was supposed to--” Jemma looked between them, confused. 

“What a nightmare,” Hunter commented to Bobbi as they stood shoulder to shoulder to look at Jemma. “This is really what we’re working with?” 

“Tell me about it. I’ve been trying to make this happen for, like, seven years. She’s really quite oblivious to every known indicator of human attraction.” 

“I’m right here!” Jemma exclaimed indignantly.

“Come on, you’ve got an hour to get settled in before the bachelor party.” Hunter took the bag Bobbi was carrying with what could only be called a shit-eating grin.

“Shouldn’t I be with the bachelorette party?” Jemma searched for her phone to check the itinerary.

“They’re doing a joint bachelor-bachelorette party. Something about them not having enough friends for separate celebrations.” 

Bobbi snorted. “I don’t know either of them and somehow I don’t find that hard to believe.” 

“So when should I, erm--” Jemma gestured frantically. “You know?” 

“Spill the beans?”

“Let the cat out of the proverbial bag?” 

“Take the lid off of it?”

“Dish the dirt?” 

“Jump the shark?” 

“No, I don’t think that’s right--” Hunter said, turning to Bobbi. 

“I mean, should I even let it get to the point of the bachelor party? Should I have called, or sent a note? Oh dear--” 

But she didn’t get a chance to fret any longer for Fitz had appeared in the doorway, a luminous smile across his face. 

“You made it!” He ran forward, grabbing the suitcase in Jemma’s hand and hugging her with his free arm. She froze in his embrace and he stepped back quickly, his grin faltering a bit. “Everything alright?” 

“Just -- we must smell dreadful, from the flight, you know--” 

“Right.” 

Bobbi and Hunter had migrated behind Fitz and were giving her encouraging looks and mouthing unintelligibly. 

“We’ll just get cleaned up and meet you all at the pub?” 

“Magnificent.” He smiled at her again, a small and nervous smile that still set her stomach to fluttering. “Can’t wait.”

He carried her suitcase into the inn, calling over his shoulder that she, Peggy, and Bobbi would be sharing a room next to Daniel and Hunter. As he vanished into the lobby, Bobbi and Hunter crowded around her. 

“What was that?” Bobbi demanded. 

“Pathetic,” Hunter sighed. 

“It has to be the right time, alright? This isn’t something one just -- _drops_ upon a person. There has to be some tact to it.” 

“Lord have mercy,” Bobbi muttered. 

 

 

Jemma found a dozen things to do to get ready for the bachelor party, meaning she didn’t see Fitz again until she and Bobbi entered the back room of the town’s only pub. A cheer went up through the small crowd: besides Fitz, Daisy, and Hunter, the party consisted of Daisy’s other supporting musicians, several classmates from their senior high, and a cousin of Fitz’s Jemma vaguely remembered meeting at Easter when they were kids. 

Too few people to avoid the people she wanted to avoid, and too many people to make a scene. 

Or so she thought, until she lost track of how many beers Bobbi slid in front of her. She was no lightweight, but she was beginning to feel quite relaxed. 

It was around this point of intoxication that the other guests started calling for the best man and maid of honor to make speeches. 

“All yours, love,” Hunter said with a devilish grin, gesturing for Jemma to stand. 

She did so, still quite steady on her feet, and her eyes found Fitz’s. 

_This is it._

“For those of you who haven’t met me yet, I’m Jemma. For those of you who don’t remember me, shame on you.” 

There were a few appreciate titters and a muffled groan from Bobbi. 

“Although technically I am fulfilling the duties of the maid of honor tonight and tomorrow, Hunter and I have swapped betrotheds -- betrothen? -- so that we can speak to the one we know best. Hunter gets Daisy, and I -- get -- Fitz.” 

She tilted her head slightly as she looked at him, trying to read his expression. 

“I have known Fitz since we were younger than my own daughter is now. Where is Peggy, by the way?” 

“We left her with Mrs. Fitz,” Hunter whispered soothingly, leaning forward to pat her arm. 

“Right. Good. Yes. Where was I? Ah yes, Fitz. Lee - oh - pold Fitz. Or Fitzy, to his friends.” 

Fitz blushed as Daisy laughed and ruffled her fiance's hair playfully. 

“Fitz is a handful, as I’m sure you all know. Much too bright for his own good, certainly. A nightmare on the dance floor. And the boy can hold his drink, as I learned to my own detriment when I tried to go shot-for-tequila-shot with him on the night of my eighteenth birthday.” 

Everyone laughed again. Everyone except Fitz. 

“Honestly, I like to party as much as the next person -- or I did, before I became a mum and all that, blah blah blah -- but I have never been as drunk as that night. Literally, no memory after the third shot. Or was it the fourth? Anyway, I assume I had a wonderful time. Did we have fun, Fitz?” 

He was staring at her with the strangest expression on his face. She knew they were out of sync after so many years apart but this, this was a look she’d never seen on him. She vaguely saw Daisy reach over to squeeze his hand and felt suddenly quite sober. 

“But you’re not here to hear about me.” She cleared her throat nervously and looked down at her hands for a long moment. At last, she said carefully, “Choosing the person we spend the rest of our lives with is one of the most important decisions any of us make. Because when it’s wrong, you feel it -- you feel it in every beat of your heart, you feel it when you wake first thing in the morning, you feel it in every decision you make and you feel it at night when you are sleeping beside someone but you still feel cold.” 

She was paraphrasing Fitz’s letter now and she knew it and Bobbi knew it and she wanted to look up to see if Fitz knew it too but she couldn’t, for fear she’d lose her nerve. 

“I know a thing or two about making the wrong decisions,” she said quietly. “So many of them have led me away from you, Fitz. The fact that I am even here today is a testament to the power of our friendship -- I think it was always there, in the darkest times, keeping me alive, even when you weren’t there. And I am the luckiest person alive for that gift.” 

She finally looked at him, barely able to see him through her tears. 

“I would say I hope I didn’t take it for granted, but I know that I did. Because sometimes you don’t see that the best thing that’s ever happened to you has been beside you the whole damn time.” 

Jemma swiped fiercely at her cheeks, knowing her make-up was a mess. “But maybe distance was what we needed. Because I have realized that no matter where you are, or what you do, I will always, honestly, truly, completely love you.” 

The room was deathly silent. 

But then Jemma’s gaze slipped to the right, to Daisy. Daisy, whose mother had lied to cover for Jemma after the condom fiasco. Daisy, who had found Fitz worth kissing and loving even when Jemma had been too blind. Daisy, who had helped raise Fitz out of the darkness he’d inhabited during his first year at MIT. Daisy, who out of pure goodwill had kept Jemma’s baby a secret from Fitz. Daisy, who had never been anything but wonderful and who was now staring at Jemma with a open mouth. 

“--like a sister loves a brother,” Jemma said quickly, “and a friend loves a friend.” 

She sat down heavily. Beside her, Bobbi and Hunter simultaneously lifted their glasses and downed the rest of their drinks in one go. 

She heard nothing of Hunter’s raunchy follow-up speech as she focused all her attention on not crying in front of them all. Under the table, Bobbi took hold of her hand and held it the rest of the night, rubbing a thumb across her knuckles. 

The cab ride home was understandably tense, though Bobbi maneuvered it so that they ended up sharing a car with the chatty drummer rather than either Daisy or Fitz. Jemma pressed her cheek to the cool window, already plotting ways to make herself violently ill before the actual wedding so that she could beg off and flee forever. 

The next cab pulled up right behind them at the inn, and Jemma hurried inside, planning to run upstairs before she’d have to face what she’d said. But as she entered the lobby, Peggy came running down, face quite red, and pelted past Jemma into the night. 

“Peggy!” Jemma cried, wheeling about and chasing after her, knocking past several members of the bachelor party as she did so. 

She caught up to Peggy under a flowering juniper, catching her with a gentle hand on the arm. “Peggy, sweetie, what’s wrong?” 

Peggy frowned and crossed her arms, clearly with no intention of answering, so Jemma lifted her by the waist and set her down on a low-hanging branch. Running footsteps slowed behind them, and Jemma found Fitz approaching them, slightly out of breath. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, glancing between them. Jemma colored and looked back at Peggy.

“Daniel kissed me,” Peggy muttered. 

“Oh. _Oh._ ” 

“He’s certainly getting a jump on it--”

“ _Fitz._ ” But Jemma was smiling slightly as she tucked a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. “Peggy, dear, is that such a bad thing?” 

Peggy looked at her mum like she was barking. “Of course it is.” 

“Doesn’t have to be,” Fitz said bracingly, stepping forward to lean against the tree next to Peggy’s branch. “I saw you playing together earlier -- you’re a little duo. A team. You’re good together.” 

“But--” Peggy frowned. “It would be like you two kissing or something. I’ll just tell him to forget it.”

“That would be a big mistake,” Fitz said quietly. 

Jemma looked up at him, possibly permanently injuring her neck with the rapid movement, but he was gazing at her in a whole new way, or maybe an old way she’d forgotten to believe in. 

“If you reject him now,” Fitz continued, speaking to Peggy but not looking away from Jemma, “he’ll make it his life’s mission to go out and find the most perfect, beautiful, incredible girl and try to get over you. He might even marry this other woman, tell himself she’s perfect, that he’s happy, but--” He finally glanced down, then at Peggy. “But she won’t be you.” 

Peggy had inherited nothing more clearly from Jemma than her quick mind, and she narrowed her eyes at Fitz, then glanced at her mother. “But you two never actually kissed.” 

“Of course not,” Jemma murmured.

No echo came from Fitz. He studiously avoided her gaze. 

“Peggy!” 

They all jumped slightly as Daniel came sprinting across the grass. 

“I’m really sorry, Peggy--” 

But she’d leapt off the branch and ran to meet him, pecking his lips. “Don’t be, Daniel.” 

The blood was pounding in Jemma’s ears as she slowly turned back. “...Fitz?” she whispered. 

“I only realized, tonight, that you, uh, you must’ve forgotten--” He ducked his head, scratching a nonexistent itch behind one ear. “Your eighteenth birthday. Before you fell off the stool, we--” 

“Oh god,” Jemma gasped. He looked at her, bewildered and hurt, and she rushed to clarify, “The next morning, Fitz, the next morning I said something about--” 

“ ‘It was awful, I feel sick even thinking about it’? Yeah, I think those words are branded in my memory forever.” 

“Was that why -- was that why you took Daisy to the dance?” 

He swallowed and turned to face her fully. 

And then Daisy called from the front of the inn, “Fitz! Can I talk to you for a sec?” 

Jemma turned away, taking a deep, audibly shuddering breath. 

“Jemma--” 

“It’s alright. I should go make sure -- Peggy and Daniel -- and Bobbi will be wondering--” 

She hurried back into the inn before he could stop her. Daisy reached out to her as she passed, but Jemma mumbled something about needing to use the loo and brushed her off. 

She found the inn’s kitchen, deserted for the night as the staff was off to bed as well, and sat at the table, her head in her hands, reevaluating everything -- every touch, every word, every glance -- she and Fitz had shared for the last seven years. Only seven? Or had it really started long before then? _Why now?_ she thought miserably. If she’d thought it were truly one-sided, she could have forgotten everything she and Bobbi and Hunter had plotted, she could have let him go, could have almost wished him well in his marriage, but suddenly she had this glimmer of possibility that he had once -- could -- did? -- feel the same. 

Long after she’d thought everyone had gone to bed, there was a knock on the kitchen door. She looked up, surprised, then terrified, but for the second time that week, it was Daisy, not Fitz, who greeted her. 

Daisy looked a mess. Her eyes were red and puffy, the sleeves of her shirt smeared with snot and make-up. She strode into the room with intimidating purpose. “Jemma, this has to stop.” 

Jemma stood up quickly, pushing her chair in as if to create more barriers between them. “Daisy, I promise -- what I said at the pub-- I know I was out of line -- but I swear, I am leaving tomorrow, soon as it’s dawn, and you’ll never have to see me or hear from me or think of me again--” 

“Yeah, like that’s possible. If I live with Fitz, Jemma, I live with you.” 

“Tell me what to do,” Jemma whispered desperately. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I’m so sorry--” 

“No, Jemma, that’s not--” Daisy shook her head, scrunching her hair in her hands. “ _I’m_ sorry. I’ve been denying it so long but it’s _so obvious_ when you two are together. And I’m done being in the middle of that.” 

“Daisy, don’t do something you’ll regret--” 

Daisy laughed. “Wow, this is harder than I thought it would be. I’m literally trying to give Fitz back to you, after all these years. Why are you fighting me on this?” 

Jemma stuttered to a stop, one hand outstretched. “What?” 

“Jemma.” Daisy sighed and smiled sadly. “Jemma Simmons. I can’t even hate you. You’ve never once been a bitch to me, you’ve never once tried to steal him, even though you had every right-- You guys are linked, Jemma. Everyone can see it. And I guess I thought that if I tried hard enough I could someday make him happy enough that he would get over you but I’m not going to be the person who keeps you two apart.” 

“Yes you are!” Jemma shot back vehemently, very confused now about whose side she was arguing. “Fitz chose you, Daisy--” 

“I proposed to him, Jemma, and I think he only said yes because it’s been a point of contention our entire relationship that he would never get over you and he’s been so desperate to prove it.” 

“I can’t--” Jemma was finding it very hard to breathe. “I refuse to break you two up! On your wedding day, too!” 

“It’s too late! I already told him. I already set him free. He’s yours, Jemma.” 

“He...But...” Jemma cast around for something else to ground her to a reality that was becoming increasingly tenuous. “He _hates_ me!” 

“Hates -- Jemma, he _loves_ you. He thinks I don’t know but every year on your birthday he leaves his phone at home and goes out and gets shitfaced with Hunter because all he wants to do is call you. All he ever wants to do is call you, is talk to _you_ , Jemma. But he thinks _you_ hate _him_.” 

“I agreed to be maid of honor, didn’t I?” 

“Yeah, but he thinks it’s some stupid English sense of propriety, not because you’re actually happy for us.” 

Jemma pulled the chair back out and sat down dazedly. “I’m sorry, but this is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.” 

“Tell me about it,” Daisy laughed, sitting opposite her. “I’m not gonna lie to you and say this is easy. I love Fitz. But every day he spends with me and not you -- this is gonna sound melodramatic, but I think it’s killing him, slowly. Like, his soul, or something.” 

Jemma reached impulsively across the table to take Daisy’s hand. “I don’t deserve this.” 

“If you’re half the person Fitz has described, you deserve this and so much more. Just -- promise me one thing. When this is all over, when the dust has settled, do you think you and I could... try to be friends?” 

Jemma started to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a pretty big divergence from the source material but I had decided up front that Daisy was not going to be a villain nor would she be dragged through the mud. Enough media pits women against each other that I wanted to encourage something healthier (no matter how outlandishly selfless it might be in this case ;) ). 
> 
> I am SO EXCITED for the next chapter. I hope you are toooooo!!!!!! 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth over there as well.


	11. Elemental

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a shortie but a goodie.

Jemma knew that whatever Daisy said, nothing good would come of assaulting Fitz with her feelings mere moments after his planned marriage had been called off. 

But she also knew, from nearly ten years of waiting, that expecting him to take the first step towards reconciliation would leave them miles apart. 

So she kept careful tabs on him through Hunter and Mrs. Fitz, who reported that he’d stayed in Scotland despite intending to go home for work after a week’s honeymoon -- now cancelled; that he was barely eating or talking; that he had started out checking his phone every five minutes but now left it on the kitchen table when he went up to bed. 

This was when she started calling him, when she knew he wouldn’t answer and she could leave her messages. 

_Hi Fitz. It’s me. Jemma. You probably figured that out. Umm-- I hope you’re doing alright. I...just... Yes. Goodnight!_

So that first one didn’t go so well. But when he didn’t call back, which she had both hoped for and against, she gained ironic confidence. 

The next night, she called again. 

_Me again. Wondering how your day went. Peggy and I went to the zoo. She’s already decided she hates zoos and what they do to the animals. I couldn’t help being a bit proud. She’s thinking about starting a self-published newspaper so she can inform people about these issues. I haven’t broken it to her yet that newspaper’s a dying art form. ... Well, that’s it from me for today, I suppose. Thinking of you. Give my love to your mum._

It became a nightly ritual. She’d tuck Peggy in, send off a last few emails -- she and Bobbi had finally purchased the space to start their own lab for conducting medical research and were in the process of installing equipment and hiring technicians -- then snuggle into bed with her phone. At first she planned the messages, plotting out what she would say, ready to drop the phone if he answered, but with time she became used to talking to him again. 

_Hi Fitz. Did you see the newest research on subatomic particles? I could imagine you poring over the findings with that agitated excitement you always get over something that monumental. Or not monumental, really -- do you remember how you nearly cried when Pete Williams mucked up his baking soda volcano? And you claim to not care about chemistry... Oh, you know, I’ve just realized, the article on the subatomic particles was probably only circulated among the British academy for peer review before it’s published -- hang on, I’ve got it right here, I’ll read it to you --”_

And she did read it to him, as much of it as she could before her phone beeped and a toneless voice informed her Fitz’s mailbox was full. 

The next night when she called, it was empty again, which she chose to interpret as an indication that he was listening to her messages and making room for more rather than deleting them because he didn’t want to hear from her ever again. 

Once, after their lab’s grand opening, she fell asleep while leaving her message. She felt strangely comfortable, sitting there talking to Fitz (after a fashion, it was just like talking to him, though not nearly as interesting), and found herself drifting as she sketched out two-year, five-year, and ten-year plans for their research. She woke the next morning to find the timer still counting up, which she knew wouldn’t be possible if it were still on voicemail, if someone on the other end hadn’t picked up. She brought it tentatively to her ear and listened for a moment, breathless, before she hung up quickly. Some habits were harder to break than others, and she’d had seven years to school herself into cutting herself off from Fitz. 

Her final voicemail she did draft. She wrote it out in ten, then fifteen, then twenty different iterations, but none felt right. Eventually, at three in the morning, she called him. 

_Hi Fitz. Happy August 29th. Bit of an anniversary for us. Do you remember when we first met, that first day of first grade? I do. You were so quiet and pasty, so incredibly smart... And then sometime in the next ten years when I wasn’t paying attention, you went off and grew into this incredibly smart, kind, handsome man, and I took you for granted, or I thought it was all in my head--_ She inhaled sharply through her nose. 

_Quite a strange feeling, isn’t it? Never wanting to be without someone. You must have been so annoyed, me following you around all the time. I remember thinking, even then when we were first-years, that it was torture having to say goodbye to you every day so I could go home and have dinner._

_But...what if we didn’t have to? What if we went to the same place to have dinner, together, and never had to say goodbye, not ever again? There's this small cottage in Perthshire we drove by once when I was a girl, some ... some... family holiday, and I don't know why, but I ... I found it so lovely. I still think about it ... a place where you and I and Peggy could..._

_I don’t know how to fix this, Fitz. There’s nothing more I want in the world but... We were always smarter together and right now I could really use your second pair of eyes on this particularly tricky problem. If you still believe that this is possible...just...call me, would you?_

Jemma worked late in the lab that Friday, long after she’d dismissed the technicians, long after she should’ve been home to pick Peggy up from her mum’s. She felt she was on the edge of a breakthrough, and she was sure if she waited until Monday, she’d have lost it. 

The door opening behind her sent an irritating ripple through her concentration. 

“Bobbi, didn’t you get my text? I’ve almost got it -- I promise I’ll turn the lights out--” 

“Jemma.” 

She didn’t look up. She couldn’t, or he would disappear, again, except this time possibly forever. He couldn’t be here. 

But he was, if his footsteps across the empty lab were any indication. 

She rose slowly, hands shaking slightly, and turned to face him, pressing as far back against her workbench as she could. 

Even under the already-dimmed lights he looked like perfection. He was wearing a suit -- she hadn’t seem him wear a suit since their senior dance -- and a light cologne that made her gut tighten a bit, both of its own accord and because she could still smell something quintessentially Fitz underneath it. His face was...open, there was no other way to describe it, and she could read the nervousness in the slight downturn of his lips but an intense hope in the wideness of his eyes. 

He stopped a few paces away from her, the only sounds the mechanical whirrings and whooshes from machines in the background. Then he ducked his head, clasped his hands behind him, and began. 

“H, for handshake. Because that is how all this began. H E, for Herbert McLeod. As I recall, he was your first crush, and I hated him. He was the reason I swore off chemistry in the first place. We were, what, eight? Couldn’t stand the bastard. L I for listener, because it was only with you that I ever learned how to speak, and I owe that to you and how attentively you listened, truly listened, to what I said.” 

“Fitz--” Jemma’s brow scrunched as her shoulder slackened, pivoting from anxious straight to quite confused. 

But he rushed on. “B E, for beautiful -- because--” Here he looked up at her again, finally, with a hint of a cheeky smile. “Herbert McLeod’s sunshine recorder wouldn’t last a second if it tried to measure you, because you outshine everything.” 

“That’s not how a--” 

“B, for brilliant. I think I spent all of science camp trying to think of something to say to you because I had never met someone so intimidatingly smart. C, for chocolate biscuits, specifically the ones you spent most of our tenth year burning in your quest to perfect them. And yes, I told you that first batch was already perfect, and I stand by that. N, for nurturing -- you’ve been the best mum to Peggy, anyone can see that in an instant, but you’ve also cared for literally every person around you at some point or other, lifting them up when you couldn’t do the same for yourself.” 

Jemma ran back through the letters he had listed and her breath caught. 

“Fitz -- oh, _Fitz_ \--” 

“O, for Ontario, which was the last destination we picked on your globe before I left for MIT. F, for family, because I’d lost so much of that and you and your mum and dad made me and my mum feel a part of yours. N E, for neapolitan ice cream, because even though you'd rather mint chip you knew I liked it, so you'd order it just so we could split it. N A for--” 

It was the periodic table. He had taken the basis of both their fields, of their life work and their passion and their sustenance, and constructed a testament to her and to their friendship. 

Jemma propelled herself away from the workbench and towards him. He brought his hands out from behind his back to catch her in her momentum but their hands met between them like it had been orchestrated, and they pulled closer to each other with their joined fingertips. 

“You hate chemistry, you've always said that,” Jemma whispered, gazing up at him. 

“Yeah, well, there are a lot of things I’ve said which I’ve since come to regret,” he said fiercely, not breaking her gaze. 

“That goes for both of us,” she replied, squeezing his hands and lifting her chin determinedly. “But I think we’ve spent enough time punishing ourselves for misunderstandings of the past. Could we -- if you’re still game -- turn our energy now to building a future? Together?” 

It could have been awkward, with no practice and after the years apart, but they found each other in a kiss that felt like nothing more than two old lovers separated by time and space and circumstance, returned to each other once more. Jemma sighed into his lips and Fitz drew her to him, slipping his arms around her lower back as he pressed fervent kisses at the corner of her mouth and up her cheek, landing delicately to brush her outer eyelashes, which fluttered at the sensation. 

“I do hope you wrote all that down,” she murmured, running her hands along his jaw as if memorizing the contours. “I plan to read the entire table later.” 

“I only made it to iron,” he said seriously, drawing back slightly to look at her. She barely suppressed a whine in protest. “I figured if we weren’t snogging by then, it was all for naught anyway--” 

“You’re insufferable!” she cried, but the next moment his mouth was back on hers and his tongue had started tracing scandalous paths across her lips and she wrapped her arms fully around his neck, pulling him closer, determined to never let him go again, not once, not ever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay for real last change in number of chapters. Just one left: it's an epilogue and I've already started planning and it's gonna be damn fluffy so prepare yourselves. 
> 
> Deep breaths. Hoping you've all survived this long and can stop crying (sad tears, anyway). 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr -- I'm grapehyasynth over there as well!


	12. Epilogue

_Some months later..._

Jemma woke to a warm and steady brush of air across her elbow. 

Awareness slowly returned but she kept her eyes closed, savoring the sensations. 

Fitz was snuggled up behind her, his arm draped over her chest. Her own arm lay over his, their fingers intertwined on her shoulder. His breaths blew out across her skin in time with the press and release of his chest against her back. 

She slid her foot back between his legs and up his ankle, teasing under the leg of his pajama bottoms. She stretched her whole body against him, fit to burst with the deep contentment from the combined feeling of Fitz, the covers warm and soft around them, and the morning sunlight tickling her eyelids. 

Fitz stirred as she moved, though waking him hadn’t -- consciously -- been her intention. 

“Sorry,” she whispered, turning her head slightly so her cheek met his. “Go back to sleep.” 

He made an indistinct noise of dissent and nuzzled forward, his lips pressing behind her ear once, twice. “It’s your special day.” 

“And is that a present you’ve brought me?” She wiggled her hips against him. 

“Stop taking advantage of my biological responses which have nothing to do with you specifically, woman!” 

“Do you ever respond to me in any other way?” 

He grinned against her skin. “You’ve got me there.” 

She sighed and pulled his arm tighter around herself so that the comforter trapped them in a cocoon. He continued to press soft kisses down the back of her neck. 

“I could stay like this forever,” she murmured. 

“You’ll not hear me objecting.” 

The door to their bedroom burst open, however, and a tiny form barrelled across the room and flew onto the bed with them. 

“Me too, me too!” Peggy splayed herself on top of them, hugging them both. 

“You’re up early, monkey!” Fitz rolled away from Jemma so that Peggy dropped between them. 

“Oh, I’ve been up for hours. I’ve been making this!” Peggy opened her hands and revealed a flower crown, painstakingly woven. “Happy mother’s day, mum.” 

She placed the crown carefully on Jemma’s head. “I’ve a few more little gifts for you downstairs but I wanted you to feel like a princess the moment you woke up.” 

“You are the best daughter in the _world_ ,” Jemma enthused. “Nay, in the _universe!_ ” She hugged Peggy to her and kissed the top of her head. “I hope you’ve made yourself a matching one?” 

“That was next on my to-do list.” Peggy turned in Jemma’s arms to look at Fitz, who was watching them with his hands pillowed under his head. “I feel a bit odd not having anything for you, dad, but I decided you could help me make breakfast for mum and that can be our little treat.” 

“Pancakes?” Fitz asked. 

“What else?” Peggy wriggled up and out of her mother’s grip and bounded over their legs and off the bed. 

“Careful, monkey--” 

“You have five minutes!” she called as she ran back out of the room. 

Jemma smiled at the door then rolled over to look at Fitz. 

“She called me dad,” he whispered to her, eyes wide. 

“I noticed that,” she said with a grin, reaching out one hand to trace a finger along his cheek. “How do you feel about it?” 

“Rather fantastic, honestly,” he said with an eager smile. “I just worry -- are you sure she wouldn’t rather call Will dad?” 

“You’re a better father than he ever was.” She slipped her fingers into his curls and rested her hand there. “She’s old enough to know the difference, and she’s chosen you.”

“I am the luckiest man in the world.” He turned his head so that he could kiss her palm. "You know what Daniel called me the other day? _Mr. Simmons._ ”

“Oh, no, I don’t like that at all!” Jemma exclaimed. “That’s my father!” 

“I considered it a bit of an honor, actually,” Fitz mused. “Reminded me of him.” 

Jemma’s eyes softened and she slid her hand down to his neck, tickling the ends of his hair with her fingertips. 

They gazed at each other across the pillows for a long moment until Peggy shouted up the stairs that the pan was hot and Fitz’s services were required. He groaned and sat up, tugging the covers up to Jemma’s chin. 

“You stay here and we’ll bring you breakfast in bed?” 

She thought for a moment then shook her head. “It’s a lovely idea but I’d rather spend the morning watching my two best friends make a mess of my kitchen.” 

“Can’t wait til she’s old enough to bring us _both_ breakfast in bed,” Fitz said wistfully as he waited while Jemma stepped into her slippers and met him at the end of their bed. “Without blowing a fuse.” 

“As long as you’re here to fix it I’m not at all concerned.” She stood on her tiptoes to give him a peck. 

They plodded down to the kitchen hand in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining us on this journey!!
> 
> Also yes, "monkey" is a reference to Orphan Black :)


End file.
